In recent years, the ability to enhance polymer properties through homogenous dispersion of nanofillers in polymer matrices has gained growing attention from the synthetic community. Recent pioneering work has shown that nanofillers which are dispersed homogenously throughout a semi-crystalline polymer above the melting point can be organized in the interlamellar domain when the system is slowly cooled to the crystallization temperature. The hierarchical ordering of the nanoparticles templated by the polymer crystallization was shown to increase the modulus of the material by an order of magnitude compared to the homogenously dispersed filler at the same loading. This work has important implications for improving the properties of semi-crystalline polyolefin materials, already renowned for their toughness, low conductivity, and chemical inertness. However, achieving nanofiller miscibility with polyolefin matrices, specifically with linear polyethylene, is the bottleneck in mapping this crystallization driven assembly of nanoparticles onto polyolefin materials. We have recently devised a synthetic strategy which allows for covalent attachment of polyolefin analogs to the surface of silica nanoparticles with the goal of achieving filler miscibility with a polyolefin matrix. This approach, along with recent results regarding the filler dispersion will be discussed.

Recent advances in achieving nanofiller miscibility with polyolefin matrices

255th National Meeting (2018)

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