Small nanoparticles: big effects on polymer nanocomposites

31 March 2017

Until recently, scientists believed an optimal nanoparticle size must exist. Decreasing the size would be good only to a point, as the smallest particles tend to plasticize at low loadings and aggregate at high loadings, both of which harm macroscopic properties of polymer nanocomposites.
A new study compared polymer nanocomposites containing particles 1.8 nm in diameter and those with particles 25 nm in diameter. Most conventional polymer nanocomposites contain particles are 10-50 nm in diameter. In the future, novel polymer nanocomposites may contain nanoparticles far less than 10 nm in diameter, enabling new properties not achievable with larger nanoparticles (ScienceDaily, 8 March 2017).
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Click here for an abstract of an article about the research in ACS Nano.

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