Morphologies of Polyisoprene-Grafted Silica Nanoparticles in Model Elastomers

• DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.9b01479
• Publication Date: 2019-10-02T16:33:09Z
• Authors: Marine Bonnevide; Andrew M. Jimenez; Deboleena Dhara; Trang N.T. Phan; Nicolas Malicki; Zaid M. Abbas; Brian Benicewicz; Sanat K. Kumar; Marc Couty; Didier Gigmes; Jacques Jestin
• Keywords: Matrix (chemical analysis)

We control nanoparticle (NP) dispersion by leveraging the entropic and enthalpic effects associated with mixing silica NPs grafted polyisoprene (PI) chains into matrices of varying degrees chemical dissimilarity. Previous work in this area has primarily focused on factors alone, hence, represents a significant advance over current state-of-the-art. show using combination transmission electron microscopy/small-angle X-ray scattering that particles PI identical microstructure yields states as found literature for such systems. However, replacing matrix dissimilar leads to an introduction interactions that, some cases, can drastically change resulting morphology. In particular, while slightly different microstructures free only yield moderated differences, styrene–butadiene copolymers completely behavior. last case, phase separation becomes more likely increasing graft length, system (whose behavior is dominated factors) shows opposite Tuning relative importance versus thus another tool controlling self-assembled structure NPs, which gives rise enhanced macroscopic properties composite.