Layered assemblies of polymers and graphene derivatives employ nacre's tested strategy of intercalating soft organic layers with hard crystalline domains. These layered systems commonly display elastic properties that exceed simple mixture rule predictions, but the molecular origins of this phenomenon are not well understood. Here we address this issue by quantifying the elastic behavior of nan...

Nanocomposites of poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) and nitrogen-doped carbon nanotubes (N-CNTs) have been synthesized by two methods; specifically, direct solution mixing and in situ polymerization. The nanocomposites were characterized by means of transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray dispersive spectroscopy, UV-Vis spectrophotometry, photoluminescence ...

A series of 0-3 metal oxide-polyolefin nanocomposites are synthesized via in situ olefin polymerization, using the following single-site metallocene catalysts:C2-symmetric dichloro[rac-ethylenebisindenyl]zirconium(IV),Me2Si( BuN)(η-C5Me4)TiCl2, and (η -C5Me5)TiCl3 immobilized onmethylaluminoxane (MAO)-treated BaTiO3, ZrO2, 3-mol%-yttria-stabilized zirconia, 8-mol%-yttria-stabilized zirconia, sp...

Ferroelectric-relaxor behavior of Ba(Zr0.3Ti0.7)O3 nanofibers (BZT NF) with a large aspect ratio were prepared via electrospinning and surface modified by PVP as dielectric fillers. The nanocomposite flexible films based on surface modified BZT NF and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) were fabricated via a solution casting. The results show that the surface-modified BZT NF fillers are highly dispe...

Title of Document: STRUCTURE AND PROPERTIES OF NANOCOMPOSITES CONTAINING ANISOTROPIC NANOPARTICLES Bani Hans Cipriano, Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Directed By: Professor Srinivasa R. Raghavan, Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering This dissertation deals with polymeric materials containing dispersed anisotropic nanoparticles such as nanotubes, nanofibers, and nanoplatelets. Such po...

Cadmium telluride (CdTe) tetrapods were synthesized via multiple injections of the Te precursor by utilizing bifunctional ligands. Subsequently, tetrapod-shaped semiconducting inorganic-organic nanocomposites (i.e., P3HT-CdTe tetrapod nanocomposites) were produced by directly grafting conjugated polymer ethynyl-terminated poly(3-hexylthiophene) (i.e., P3HT-≡) onto azide-functionalized CdTe tetr...

Nanoscale control of structure in polymer nanocomposites is critical for their performance but has been difficult to investigate systematically due to the lack of a suitable experimental model. In this work, we investigated the role of nanoparticle layer separation in the finite deformation response of layered polyurethane(PU-) montmorillonite (MTM) nanocomposites. A series of multilayered nano...

Polymer layered silicate (PLS) nanocomposites have been prepared with diglycidyl ether of bisphenol-A (DGEBA) epoxy resin as the matrix and organically modified montmorillonite (MMT) as the clay nanofiller. Resin-clay mixtures with different clay contents (zero, two, five and 10 wt%) were cured, both isothermally and non-isothermally, using a poly(ethyleneimine) hyperbranched polymer (HBP), the...

The melt rheological properties of layered silicate nanocomposites with maleic anhydride (MA) functionalized polypropylene are contrasted to those based on ammonium-terminated polypropylene. While the MA functionalized PP based nanocomposites exhibit solid-like linear viscoelastic behavior, consistent with the formation of a long-lived percolated nanoparticle network, the single-end ammonium fu...

Introduction Layered-silicate based polymer nanocomposites have become an attractive set of organic-inorganic materials not only for their obvious potential as technological materials, but also for providing a convenient macroscopic system to study fundamental scientific issues concerning confined polymers [1]. Studying the formation, structure and dynamics of these nanocomposites can lead to a...