Fabrication of water‐soluble poly(vinyl alcohol)‐based composites with improved thermal behavior for potential three‐dimensional printing application

Water‐soluble support materials are essential for fabrication of three‐dimensional printing component, in particular of fused deposition modeling (FDM) process. Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) was considered as a potential ideal candidate used in rapid prototyping technology, while its properties and process‐ability need to be improved for the wide application. This article attempts to use urea/caprolatam (UC) as modification additive for tuning the thermal and mechanical properties of PVA. PVA‐based films with different content of additives were prepared by solution casting method. The results showed that with the increase of UC, PVA films showed decreased crystallinity and melting temperature, while the initial degradation temperature and melt index were increased. The corporation of UC decreased the melting temperature to 173.04 °C and PVA composite with 4.5% crystallinity was fabricated. Due to the formation of hydrogen bonding between UC and the hydroxyl group of PVA, the tensile strength and modulus of PVA were slightly decreased, while strain‐at‐break was significantly enhanced, as high as 470.24%, indicating UC behaved as good plasticizing effect. The microstructure examination via scanning electron microscopy showed that when the content of UC was less than 30% in the composites, homogeneous phase could be observed, indicating good compatibility between these two components. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017 , 134, 44966.