Polymeric nanocomposite preparation and characterization

Nanocomposite materials have become a highly used and intriguing area due to their superior thermal, mechanical, rheological, optical and electronic properties. Due to the fact that it is cheap and easy to obtain, it is a popular material in the most important usage area such as automotive, biomedical, packaging and most of all in the plastics industry. With general description, the material obtained by combining it heterogeneously at the macro or micro level to reveal or improve the good properties of two or more materials or to produce a new property is called composite material. Nanocomposites are composite materials containing particles having at least one dimension less than 100 nm dispersed in a polymer matrix. Many methods have been developed in the preparation of polymeric nanocomposites. Few generally accepted methods are situ polymerization (in-stu), blending in solution and melt blending. Polymeric nanocomposite preparation by situ(in-stu) polymerization is based on expanding the polymer chain and opening and dispersing the clay layers. In the process, first the nanoclays are mixed with the monomer solution, then the polymerization process is initiated by the effect of heat and initiator. Thanks to the polymer chain growing between the layers, the spacing between the layers is opened and the layers thus providing a better, random distribution within the polymer matrix. In this thesis, composites of polypyrrole and clays, which are widely used, were synthesized and characterized. Composite synthesis; The synthesis. of composite was carried out in three stages: purification of the clay, organoclay synthesis and nanocomposite synthesis. Na-MMT clay was purified by being dried at 120 ° C.In organokil synthesis; Two types of ionic liquids were used, 1-ethyl-3-methyl imidazolium tetrafluoroborate and 1-hexyl-3-methyl imidazolium tetrafluoroborate. Nanocomposite synthesis was carried out by in-stu polymerization. The obtained nanocomposites were characterized by FT-IR and SEM analyzes. Furthermore, inter-layer distances were determined by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and thermal degradation was determined by TG-DTA analysis. As an outcome of the analyzes, it was observed that IL-2 ionic fluid had a significant effect on increasing inter-layer distance as expected due to its long chain, but temperature variable had no significant effect on increasing inter-layer distance. In TGA analysis, it was concluded that the temperature resistance of the composites modified with ionic liquids increased yet different temperature conditions had no effect.