Our focus is to improve the properties of polymer nanocomposites by both changing the nature of nanoparticles, and the polymers. We use a method to fractionate graphene oxide (GO) on the basis of oxidation. Our findings have demonstrated that this variation in degree of oxidation of GO plays an important role in the improvement of tensile properties of GO based polymer nanocomposites. We use different characterization techniques including microscopy, Instron tensile tester, XRD, Raman, FTIR, and TGA. The interaction of GO sheets with the polymer matrix plays an important role in the mechanical properties of the nanocomposites. We show that the mechanical properties are also dependent on the hydrophilic or hydrophobic nature of the polymers. We further investigate the polymer nanocomposites that are made from oil/water emulsion systems stabilized by GO. The nature of the emulsion systems can be controlled by replacing a part of GO with graphene sheets. This method of using graphene and GO mixture also provides a way to control the conductivity of these polymer nanocomposites.

Improving the properties of graphene oxide based polymer nanocomposites

254th National Meeting (2017)

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