Role of Filler Shape and Connectivity on the Viscoelastic
Behavior in Polymer Nanocomposites
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Abstract
We compare the rheological behavior
of three classes of polymer
nanocomposites (PNCs) to understand the role of particle shape and
interactions on mechanical reinforcement. The first two correspond
to favorably interacting composites formed by mixing poly(2-vinylpyridine)
with either fumed silica nanoparticles (NPs) or colloidal spherical
silica NPs. We show that fumed silica NPs readily form a percolated
network at low NP volume fractions. We deduce that the NPs act as
network junctions with the effectively irreversibly bound polymer
chains serving as the connecting bridges. By comparing with colloidal
spherical silica, which has a significantly higher percolation threshold,
we conclude that the fractal shape of the fumed silica is responsible
for its unusually low percolation threshold. The third system corresponds
to polystyrene grafted colloidal silica nanoparticles (PGNPs) in a
polystyrene matrix. These PNCs have an even lower percolation threshold
probably because the grafted chains increase the effective volume
fraction of the NPs. When we take these different thickness of the
polymer layers in the two cases into account (i.e., grafted layer
vs adsorbed layer thickness), the percolation threshold for the fumed
and the grafted system occurs at similar effective loadings, but the
NP network with fumed silica has a higher low-frequency plateau modulus
than that formed with the PGNPs. These findings can be reconciled
by the fact that the fumed silica NPs are composed of fused entities,
thus ensuring that they have a higher modulus than the PGNPs where
the modulus is largely attributed to interactions between the grafts.
Our results systematically stress the important role of the nanofiller
shape and connectivity on the mechanical reinforcement of PNCs