Synthesis and characterization of Clay-PBS nanocomposites prepared by situ polymerization

초록

Silicate layered polymer nanocomposites have recently been the focus of both academic and industrial attention because the nanocomposites often exhibit greatly enhanced physical and/or chemical properties even with much smaller amount of silicate compared to the conventional micro-scale composite materials. These unique properties of polymer/silicate nanocomposites come from (i) the high degree of dispersion and (ii) the strong interaction between the silicate layers and the polymer matrix owing to the high interfacial surface-to-volume ratio. In order to improve the interaction between polymer and clay, various cationic surfactants with functional groups were used to modify the clay through ion exchange reaction. Another approach for improvement of the compatibility between polymer and clay is introduction of polar functional groups such as maleic anhydride to the polymer matrix. Both intercalated and exfoliated structures coexisted in polypropylene(PP)/clay composites with maleic anhydride-grated-PP as an additive. Manias and Chung successfully obtained an exfoliated PP/clay nanocomposites using ammonium- terminated PP as the organic modification for montmorillonite. However, the window of the spectrum of the two approaches is very narrow due to limited availability of the chemicals. In this study, we devised a new and convenient method to introduce additional functional groups to the clays which had already been modified with [(CH3)2HTN+(C8H17)].