Abstract: With anthracene. maleic anhydride and hydrazine hydrate as raw materials, a novel α-nucleating agent（AMHD）for isotactic polypropylene（iPP）was synthesized. Its thermal stability was characterized using thermogravimetric analysis（TG）. The influence of the nucleating agent on the crystalline morphology, crystallization behavior, mechanical properties, and Vicat softening temperature（VST）of iPP was investigated with X-ray diffraction（XRD）, polarized light microscopy（PLM）, differential scanning calorimetry（DSC）,etc. It showed that AMHD enhanced the crystallization temperature（Tc）and crystallinity（Xc）of iPP. The mechanical properties and the heat resistant temperature of iPP improved greatly. Compared with neat iPP, the Charpy impact strength, tensile strength, and flexural strength increased by 1.27 times, 18.02 %, and 10.76 %, respectively.

Key words: isotactic polypropylene, nucleating agent, α-crystalline, property