Polymer Nanocomposite

Polymer Nanocomposite

Polymer nanocomposites (PNC) consist of a polymer or copolymer having nanoparticles or nanofillers dispersed in the polymer matrix. These may be of different shape (e.g., platelets, fibers, spheroids), but at least one dimension must be in the range of 1–50 nm. These PNC's belong to the category of multi-phase systems (MPS, viz. blends, composites, and foams) that consume nearly 95% of plastics production. These systems require controlled mixing/compounding, stabilization of the achieved dispersion, orientation of the dispersed phase, and the compounding strategies for all MPS, including PNC, are similar.

Polymer nanoscience is the study and application of nanoscience to polymer-nanoparticle matrices, where nanoparticles are those with at least one dimension of less than 100 nm.

The transition from micro- to nano-particles lead to change in its physical as well as chemical properties. Two of the major factors in this are the increase in the ratio of the surface area to volume, and the size of the particle. The increase in surface area-to-volume ratio, which increases as the particles get smaller, leads to an increasing dominance of the behavior of atoms on the surface area of particle over that of those interior of the particle. This affects the properties of the particles when they are reacting with other particles. Because of the higher surface area of the nano-particles, the interaction with the other particles within the mixture is more and this increases the strength, heat resistance, etc. and many factors do change for the mixture.

An example of a nanopolymer is silicon nanospheres which show quite different characteristics; their size is 40–100 nm and they are much harder than silicon, their hardness being between that of sapphire and diamond.