Viscoelasticity of shell-crosslinked core–shell nanoparticles filled polystyrene melt

Shell-crosslinked core–shell nanoparticles (SCCSN) of 63–104 nm in diameter and containing 79.1 wt% crosslinked polystyrene (PS) shell of 16.5–37.0 nm in thickness were prepared by miniemulsion polymerization of styrene in the presence of silane modified nanosilica. The PS shell was crosslinked using divinyl benzene in order to anchor the shell on the nanoparticle surface, to segregate the silica core from the matrix and to avoid entanglement between the shell PS and the matrix macromolecules in SCCSN filled PS composites. Steady and dynamic rheologies of SCCSN filled PS were compared with bare silica filled PS. The SCCSN filled PS composites exhibited exceedingly good rheological stability than silica filled ones during annealing. Both bare silica and SCCSN introduced a non-terminal dynamic rheology while they did not introduce additional mechanism responsible for origination of nonlinear steady flow except for macromolecular disentanglement of the PS matrix. The reinforcement of SCCSN to PS was related to the silica core even though the crosslinked shell could effectively eliminate filler aggregation as the case of silica filled PS.