Evaluation of interfacial layer properties in the polystyrene/silica nanocomposite

Abstract

Processing conditions and final mechanical properties of polymer nanocomposites are affected by their interfacial layers behavior. However, it is impossible to determine directly the properties of these layers by dynamic rheometry tests. In this work, the interfacial layers properties are evaluated for polystyrene containing silica nanoparticles by the concept of glass-transition temperature shift. The samples were prepared via solutionmixing method and dynamic rheometry was used to determine the viscoelastic behavior of filled polymers in the melt state. This initial step showed that addition of silica particles increased the glass-transition temperature. By preference, decrease in the filler particle size lead to a drastic increase in the glass-transition temperature and interfacial layer volume fraction due to relatively high surface area of the small filler particles. Then, in the next step, the viscoelastic properties of interfacial layer have been evaluated on the basis of the properties of neat polystyrene using temperature-frequency superposition law. For this purpose, the shift factor was calculated from the glass-transition temperature of the sample with maximum filler content. Finally, the effect of immobilized interfacial layer on the viscoelastic properties of the polymer nanocomposite samples has been estimated.

Dynamics heterogeneity in silica‐filled nitrile butadiene rubber

“…At φ = 0.3, the A380 and R974 compounds do not contain HRF, while their Δ g and Δ ARF are comparable with those of the A200 compound. The total thicknesses of the adsorption layers in the A380 and R974 compounds are much smaller than that in the A200 compounds, which is consistent with previous observations that the thickness of the interphase layer increases with increasing R and interfacial interaction …”

Effect of surface area of nanosilica particles on the cure kinetics parameters of an epoxy resin system

“…From this table, it can be seen that, by decreasing the nanosilica size, in a given weight of nanosilica, the total surface area is more than doubled. The total surface area also is increased with nanosilica weight percentage up to 6%, as expected …”

Reactive melt blending of PS‐POSS hybrid nanocomposites

“…Interface thickness values of the same order were obtained for PS/silica nanocomposites by Yanagioka et al . using SAXS analysis36 and by Mortezaei et al using viscoelastic measurements 63…”