Rheology of polymer layered silicate nanocomposites

Layered silicate based polymer nanocomposites have gained significant technological interest because of the recent commercialization of nylon 6 and polypropylene based materials. Aside from the natural interests in understanding and improving the processing of these hybrids, viscoelastic measurements have also proven to be a sensitive tool to probe the mesoscale structure and the strength of polymer-nanoparticle interactions. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.