INTRODUCTION Combining polymers with an organic or inorganic filler to produce a polymer composite is common in the production and processing of modern plastics. Recently, filler sizes have been reduced to nanometer dimensions resulting in a new class of materials termed polymer nanocomposites (PNC). PNCs are commonly defined as the combination of a polymer matrix resin with inclusions that hav...

Polymer-based nanocomposites (PNCs) display fascinating functionalities to be useful in electrical switching applications like circuit breakers, switch gears, etc. These PNCs are fabricated by incorporating nanoparticles (NPs) into a polymer by in-situ polymerization. When the PNCs interrupt the high energetic fault currents generate between the two contacts in a circuit breaker, they outgas (a...

In the development of polymer nanocomposites (PNCs), computational prediction of material properties is of great advantages in achieving rational and cost-effective design. This paper introduces a new multiscale hierarchical approach specifically tailored for PNCs property prediction. Due to its distinct features of generality and comprehensiveness, the introduced methodology outperforms most e...

An off-lattice Monte-Carlo simulation was used to study non-isotropic heat conduction in aligned carbon nanotube (CNT)-polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) focusing on the effects of CNT-CNT contact and CNT distribution on heat transfer. CNT-CNT contact significantly affects the effective transport properties of PNCs, including anisotropy ratios, but has not been studied extensively either theoretical...

Submitted for the MAR14 Meeting of The American Physical Society Dynamics at the Polymer/Nanoparticle Interface in Poly(2vinylpyridine) Nanocomposites ADAM HOLT, Univ of Tennessee, Knoxville, VERA BOCHAROVA, Oak Ridge National Lab, PHILIP GRIFFIN, ALEXANDER AGAPROV, ADAM IMEL, MARK DADMUN, JOSHUA SANGORO, ALEXEI SOKOLOV, Univ of Tennessee, Knoxville — The intriguing thermodynamic properties of ...

We report the linear increase in the glass transition temperature, Tg, with nanofiller weight content. ZnO quantum dots dispersed by melt-blending in a poly(methyl methacrylate) host were characterized by differential scanning calorimetry and dynamic mechanical analysis showing that the Tg of the system is described by a power law of the interparticle distance, hp, where the percolation exponen...

Introduction Over the last decade, Polymer Nanocomposites (PNCs) have been one of the most extensively examined areas of polymeric nanomaterials. These efforts have lead to numerous commercial successes, innovative approaches for fabricating and tailoring hybrid materials, and important fundamental insights on the behavior of polymers in confined environments . Given the extensive variety of na...

In this paper we adopt molecular dynamics simulations to study the amphiphilic AB block copolymer (BCP) mediated nanoparticle (NP) dispersion in polymer nanocomposites (PNCs), with the A-block being compatible with the NPs and the B-block being miscible with the polymer matrix. The effects of the number and components of BCP, as well as the interaction strength between A-block and NPs on the sp...

Nanoparticle-polymer composites, or polymer-nanoparticle composites (PNCs), exhibit unusual mechanical and dynamical features when the particle size approaches the random coil dimensions of the host polymer. Here, we harness favourable enthalpic interactions between particle-tethered and free, host polymer chains to create model PNCs, in which spherical nanoparticles are uniformly dispersed in ...

Copper dioxide (CuO) nanoparticles and Multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) filled poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) pyrrolidone) (PVP) blend matrix (50/50 wt%) based polymer nanocomposites (PNCs) (i.e., PVA/PVP:(15-x)CuO(x)MWCNTs for x = 0,1,5,7.5, 10,14, 15wt%) have been prepared employing the solution-cast method. The morphologies of these PNCs are semicrystalline, according to an X-ray diffraction i...