Direct Relationship between Dispersion and Crystallization Behavior in Poly(ethylene oxide)/Poly(ethylene glycol)-<i>g</i>-Silica Nanocomposites

The inclusion of polymer-grafted nanoparticles (PGNPs) can impart various functional properties to polymer nanocomposites (PNCs). For semicrystalline polymers, we control the spatial dispersion PGNPs and presumably use it modulate nucleation rate polymer. In this work, correlation between quality poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)-grafted silica (PEG-g-SiO2) crystallization ability oxide) (PEO) is systematically investigated by varying grafting density (σ, chains/nm2) value P/N (P: molecular weight matrix chains, N: grafted chains). variation PEG-g-SiO2 state was studied morphological characterization small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). It found that, in contrast unmodified SiO2 poly(methyl methacrylate)-grafted silica, (high σ low P/N) increase PEO even under conditions where they are well dispersed matrix. Evidently, nature graft, i.e., amorphous PMMA vs crystallizable PEO, has profound consequences context, a novel result that not been anticipated based on previous works. Nanoparticles (NPs) aggregation occurs at higher values limits effectiveness PEG nanocomposites. Based differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) polarized light optical microscopy (PLOM) characterization, deduced increased high strong impact accelerating overall