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Reinforcement of Nylon‐6 Filaments with SiO 2 Nanoparticles and Comparison of Young's Modulus with Theoretical Bounds
Author(s) -
Mahfuz Hassan,
Hasan Mohammad M.,
Rangari Vijaya K.,
Jeelani Shaik
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
macromolecular materials and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.913
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1439-2054
pISSN - 1438-7492
DOI - 10.1002/mame.200600417
Subject(s) - materials science , modulus , composite material , protein filament , nanoparticle , stiffness , extrusion , nylon 6 , polymer , polymerization , nanocomposite , young's modulus , nanotechnology
Spherical silica nanoparticles were infused into nylon‐6 and drawn into filaments through a melt‐extrusion process. The idea was to improve the strength and stiffness of the resulting filaments by utilizing the interactions between the nanoparticles and the polymer. The focus was to increase the fracture strain of the filaments, as this had not been possible earlier with the infusion of carbon nanotubes. It has been observed that with the infusion of silica nanoparticles, the strength and Young's modulus of the nylon filament can be enhanced in the 28 to 36% range without any loss of fracture strain. The source of this improvement has been traced to the formation of stronger amide and carbonyl bonds, nucleated by the presence of SiO 2 nanoparticles during polymerization. Moreover, calculations based on basic theories of inclusions show that the Young's modulus of the nanophased filament is within 5% of the upper bound predicted by the micromechanical theory.