Morphology and physico-mechanical properties of polymer-clay nanocomposites
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Date
2007-08-25
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Abstract
Morphology and physico-mechanical properties (i.e. apparent porosity, bulk density, percentage water absorbed, flexural strength, flexural modulus, compressive strength and compressive Soodulus) of polymer-clay nanocomposites have been studied. Polymer-clay nanocomposites
were prepared by incorporating nanometer-size Mfensi clay particles into a low-density
polyethylene matrix using melt intercalation method. X-ray diffraction was used to characterize internal structure of the polymer-clay nanocomposites. The X-ray diffraction results indicated that the organoclay particles stacked together forming tactoids in the polymer matrix resulting in polymer-clay nanocomposites to have stacked intercalated structure as their internal structure. Compared with the physico-mechanical properties of the pure polymer (i.e. 0% ^Organoclay), much improvements were obtained for the apparent porosity (0.11%) att2%, for the bulk density (1.75 Kgm"3) at 4%, for the percentage water absorbed (0.05%) at 2%, for the flexural strength (11.99 MPa) at 6%, and for the flexural modulus (0.76 GPa) at 6% of the organoclay loading in the polymer-clay nanocomposites. The pure polymer (i.e. 0% Organoclay) ^was observed to have better compressive strength (15.54 MPa) and compressive modulus (0.35 ]GPa) compared with the polymer-clay nanocomposites at all organoclay loading (i.e. 2% - 10%) >of the polymer-clay nanocomposites. The results indicated that, the improvements in material properties of the polymer-clay nanocomposites observed depend on the level of interaction between the nanometer-size clay particles and the polymer matrix. The changes in the material properties of the polymer-clay nanocomposites observed have been explained by the level of interaction between the nanometer-size clay particles and the polymer matrix.
Description
A Thesis submitted to The Department of Physics , Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree
of Master of Science in Physics, 2007