An Image Processing Technique to Quantify Nanofiller Loading Accuracy in Nanocomposites

Abstract- The morphology of nanocomposite polymer materials should be homogeneous throughout the entire polymer matrix. In the present research, an image processing technique is proposed in order to quantify the homogeneity of nanosilver loading in poly(sodium acrylate)-based nanocomposites. For this purpose, nanocomposites with different loadings were synthesized and then, scanning electron microscope (SEM) images were taken. After converting the images to a black and white image (i.e., for noise elimination and thresholding), every image was converted to a matrix of “zeroes” and “ones” using a Matlab™ code, i.e., zero if the selected point is black (polymer matrix) and one if the point is white (nanofiller). The total number of ones over the total number of elements gives the loading percent of nanofiller in the selected SEM image which should reflect the amount of nanofiller added to the polymer based on the predetermined formulation. image which should reflect the amount of nanofiller added to the polymer based on the predetermined formulation. Keywords – ,, ,