Nanoscale Particle Motion in Attractive Polymer Nanocomposites

Published

December 6, 2017

Author(s)

Erkan NMN Senses, Suresh Narayanan, Yimin NMN Mao, Antonio Faraone

Abstract

Using x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy, we examined slow nanoscale motion of silica nanoparticles individually dispersed in entangled poly (ethylene oxide) melt at particle volume fractions up to 42%. The nanoparticles, therefore, serve as both fillers for the resulting attractive polymer nanocomposites and probes for the network dynamics therein. The results show that the particle relaxation closely follows the mechanical reinforcement in the nanocomposites only at the intermediate concentrations below the critical value for the chain confinement. Quite unexpectedly, the relaxation time of the particles does not further slowdown at higher volume fractions - when all chains are practically on the nanoparticle interface- and decouples from the elastic modules of the nanocomposites that further increases orders of magnitude.

Citation

Physical Review Letters

Volume

119

Issue

23

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

Polymer nanocomposites, nanoparticle dynamics, bound polymer, xpcs

Citation

, E. , Narayanan, S. , , Y. and Faraone, A. (2017), Nanoscale Particle Motion in Attractive Polymer Nanocomposites, Physical Review Letters, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=923904 (Accessed October 9, 2025)