Synthesis of partially exfoliated EPDM/LDH nanocomposites by solution intercalation: Structural characterization and properties

The use of atomic force microscopy as an important technique to analyze the dispersion of nanometric fillers and morphology in nanocomposites and polymer blends based on elastomers

“…In the same way, some other authors found good agreement between SEM and AFM techniques [28,39,43,57,60,[67][68][69]78] , or even between TEM, SEM and AFM [54] .…”

“…TEM images of EPDM/LDH nanocomposite (a) at low magnification and (b) at high magnification (c) stacks of LDH layers and (d) LDH monolayer [43] . Note: Reprinted from [43] with permission from Elsevier.…”

“…This result was also observed by SEM. [43] . Note: Reprinted from [43] with permission from Elsevier.…”

“…AFM is widely used by researchers in the study of clays dispersion in polymeric matrices, like some examples as follow. Acharya et al [43] studied the dispersion of the Mg-Al Layered Double Hydroxide (LDH) in Ethylene Propylene Diene Terpolymer (EPDM) matrix by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), TEM, SEM and AFM. Clay lamellaes presented partial exfoliation in the rubber matrix, according to the results of all the techniques used in the work.…”

“…The main factors of mechanical energy dissipation of the tip and consequent phase change are the viscoelastic, adhesive and topographical properties of the region being examined. In addition, it allows to obtain new information about the polymers surface such as tribological data [3] , local contaminants [6] , morphology [17, , distribution of phases in blends and composites [41][42][43][44][45][46][47] , compatibility between the phases of polymer blends and interaction between nanocomposites phases [48][49][50][51][52][53][54] , polymeric chains conformation [7,38] , cross-link density [55][56][57] , dispersion of fillers in the polymeric matrix [10,12,16,48,49,[58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69] , among other applications.…”