Quantification of the layer dispersion degree in polymer layered silicate nanocomposites by transmission electron microscopy |
| |
Authors: | ZP Luo JH Koo |
| |
Affiliation: | a Microscopy and Imaging Center, Biological Sciences Building West, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843-2257, USA b Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-0292, USA |
| |
Abstract: | As the performance of polymer layered silicate nanocomposites strongly depends on their interior layer dispersion, quantification of the layer dispersion degree is needed. In this work, a new methodology was developed to determine the dispersion parameter D0.1, based on the measurement of the free-path spacing distance between the single clay sheets from the transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images. Several examples of exfoliated, intercalated, and immiscible composites were studied. It was found that the exfoliated composites had D0.1 over 8%, while that of intercalated composites were between 4 and 8%. In the case of intercalation, a high frequency peak appeared at a short spacing distance in the histogram, which was a characteristic of the intercalation, distinct from the exfoliation. The main utility of this TEM methodology is for the quantification of exfoliated or intercalated samples with small number of layers with stacks. The dispersion parameter D0.1 below 4% was suggested to classify as immiscible. A unique advantage of the TEM measurement is that the dispersion degree of different fillers can be counted individually. |
| |
Keywords: | Dispersion quantification Polymer/clay composite materials Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) |
本文献已被 ScienceDirect 等数据库收录! |
|