Shape-memory polymers can revert to their original shape when they are reheated. The stress generated by shape recovery is a growing function of the energy absorbed during deformation at a high temperature; thus, high energy to failure is a necessary condition for strong shape-memory materials. We report on the properties of composite nanotube fibers that exhibit this particular feature. We observed that these composites can generate a stress upon shape recovery up to two orders of magnitude greater than that generated by conventional polymers. In addition, the nanoparticles induce a broadening of the glass transition and a temperature memory with a peak of recovery stress at the temperature of their initial deformation.

Water-soluble macroalkoxyamines are shown to be particularly well-suited initiators for nitroxide-mediated emulsion polymerization. They lead to the synthesis of amphiphilic block copolymers that self-assemble in situ into well-defined nanoobject morphologies, in agreement with the principles of polymerization-induced micellization. Depending on the molar mass of the hydrophobic block, the formed nanoparticles are hairy spherical micelles, nanofibers, or vesicles. The nanofibers are the most intriguing and spectacular structure and strongly affect the physicochemical properties of the aqueous dispersions.

We investigate the nanostructure and the linear rheological properties of polybutylacrylate (PBA) filled with Stöber silica particles grafted with PBA chains. The silica volume fractions range from 1.8 to 4.7%. The nanostructure of these suspensions is investigated by small-angle neutron scattering (SANS), and we determine their spectromechanical behavior in the linear region. SANS measurements performed on low volume fraction composites show that the grafted silica particles are spherical, slightly polydisperse, and do not form aggregates during the synthesis process. These composites thus constitute model filled polymers. The rheological results show that introducing grafted silica particles in a polymer matrix results in the appearance of a secondary process at low frequency: for the lowest volume fractions, we observe a secondary relaxation that we attribute to the diffusion of the particles in the polymeric matrix. By increasing the silica volume fraction up to a critical value, we obtain gellike behavior at low frequency as well as the appearance of a structure factor on the scattering intensity curves obtained by SANS. Further increasing the silica particle concentration leads to composites exhibiting solidlike low-frequency behavior and to an enhanced structure peak on the SANS diagrams. This quantitative correlation between the progressive appearance of a solidlike rheological behavior, on one hand, and a structure factor, on the other hand, supports the idea that the viscoelastic behavior of filled polymers is governed by the spatial organization of the fillers in the matrix.