Mechanical properties of transparent poly(methyl methacrylate) nanocomposites reinforced with core-shell polyacrylonitrile/poly(methyl methacrylate) nanofibers

Having considered the mechanical and optical properties related to microstructure, the authors of the present work did a study of the in situ interface formation between polyacrylonitrile/poly(methyl methacrylate) (PAN/PMMA) core-shell nanofibers and PMMA resin so as to prepare reinforced PMMA nanocomposites (NCs). The NCs were produced using the dip-coating method. The core-shell nanofibers were generated via phase separation of PAN/PMMA solution during the conventional electrospinning. The results of attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, transmission electron microscope, and energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer confirmed the formation of core-shell structure of the PAN/PMMA nanofibers. According to the findings of the study, the NCs reinforced with 1.7% volume fractions (v(f)) of the core-shell nanofibers, having the composition of 50/50 (PAN/PMMA), had the highest tensile and bending properties. The obtained results showed that by increasing thev(f)of nanofibers from 1.7 to 2.9%, the tensile and bending moduli increased by 29.9 and 44.2%, respectively. Increasingv(f)to 5.7% decreased the just-mentioned properties. Moreover, the transparency of NCs decreased by less than 1, 10, and 18%, respectively, when the aforementioned volume fractions were applied. The theoretical values for the tensile modulus were calculated using the models proposed by Manera, Pan, and Halpin-Tsai-Nielsen. The best prediction was made when the model proposed by Halpin-Tsai-Nielsen was applied.