Study on structural and functional properties of porous SiO₂ core‐shell construction/polyethylene nanocomposites with enhanced interfacial interaction

Abstract

The addition of inorganic particles can endow polymer matrices with different new features, thereby realizing an optimization to the structural and functional properties of composite. The overall properties of composites are greatly influenced by both fillers dispersion and fillers-polymer interfacial interaction. However, to simultaneously improve these mentioned two issues is still a critical challenge in the field of polymer-based nanocomposite. Herein, a typical core-shell structured mesoporous silica-coated silica (SiO 2 @mSiO 2 ) construction was successfully synthesized by using a bi-phase method. The SiO 2 @mSiO 2 filled polyethylene (PE) nanocomposite was fabricated through a precisely controlled melt-mixing approach. Benefiting from the additional mesoporous SiO 2 shell, both the dispersion of SiO 2 @mSiO 2 and the SiO 2 @mSiO 2 -PE matrix interfacial interaction are improved. Moreover, the stress-strain behavior, temperaturedependent mechanical property, thermal stability, and electrical insulating property of SiO 2 @mSiO 2 /PE composite were studied in detail. It is found that