Relation between the viscoelastic and flammability properties of polymer nanocomposites

Previous work has shown that the formation of a network structure of nanoparticles within a polymer matrix can significantly reduce nanocomposite flammability and that viscoelastic properties could be utilized to predict their flammability reduction. The present work extends this type of investigation to the study of clay and carbon nanotube nanocomposites. In particular, we study PS/clay, PS/MWNT, PMMA/clay, and PMMA/SWNT nanocomposites. At a clay level of about 10% by mass, the network structure is formed for the PS and the PMMA clay nanocomposites; it requires a level of about 0.5% with the SWNT and 2% with the MWNT. These samples showed significantly reduced mass loss rates of PS and PMMA. However, the solid residues collected from radiative gasification tests of PS/clay and PMMA/clay showed many small cracks, despite the network formation within the initial sample. This is in contrast to the smooth, continuous residues (no cracks or openings) for PS/MWNT and PMMA/SWNT nanocomposites. The cracks in the clay samples are probably formed due to weaker network at elevated temperatures due to weaker bridging interaction between clay platelets as compared to stronger network resulting from dense entanglement and bridging of carbon nanotubes.