Processing and morphological development of montmorillonite epoxy nanocomposites

Polymer-layerec silicate nanocomposites are new hybrid polymeric materials with nanometre thick layered silicates that generally show improvement over the properties of polymeric materials. This paper reports that synthesized organolayered silicates can be used to make epoxy nanocomposites. The nanocomposites were characterized by wide-angle x-ray diffraction, small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) and transmission electron microscopy. The studies on in situ SAXS and differential scanning calorimetry were carried out to gain an understanding of the morphological development of a nanocomposite during processing. The storage and glass transition temperature of the nanocomposite were also studied by dynamic mechanical analysis.