Sustainable composites can be produced through ecologically responsible conversion of renewable and fossil resources using industrial biotechnology and enhanced by nanotechnology. This approach represents a triple technological convergence that results in an emerging class of materials that can be referred to as ecobionanocomposites.1 Similarly, the recent rapid developments in Industrial Biotechnology are making the conversion of biomass into useful monomers, polymer matrices, and natural fibers increasingly feasible.2 This talk will provide and overview of recent developments in developing hierarchically structured composites materials. In particular, the phenomena of stereocomplexation is exploited to produce materials with an additional degree of supramolecular ordering. One example of these composites consists of biobased polylactides (PLA) grafted to cellulosic nanowhiskers (CNW) embedded in a stereocomplexing matrix. The approach has also been utilized to graft polymer onto inorganic particles including fumed silica which can then be embedded in the strereo complexing matrix. More recently, the approach has been extended to blended matrices. This leads to nanocomposite materials with six phases being simultaneously present thus providing an elegent hierarchically structured material. Finally, we report on reactive systems in whcih the nanocomposite materials may be utilized in conventional vacuum infused resin transfer molding (VRTM). Implications for property changes associated with this new paradigm in polymer composites are discussed.

Hierarchically structured nanocomposites

249th National Meeting (2015)

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