Authors: Daniele Pullini Gianfranco Carotenuto Mariano Palomba Alessandra Mosca Andy Horsewell Luigi Nicolais
Publish Date: 2011/12/01
Volume: 46, Issue: 24, Pages: 7905-7911
Abstract
In the last decades polymer matrix nanocomposites PMN have been studied extensively to exploit the properties of nanofillers for transforming the nature of practical household materials in particular for mechanical properties 1 Despite the early successes 2 the massive interest in nanocomposites started in 1990s when Toyota proved that adding mica to nylon produced a fivefold increase in the yield and tensile strength of the matrix material 3 4 Subsequent developments further contributed to the surging interest in polymer–nanoparticle composites In particular the growing availability of nanoparticles of monodispersed size and shape such as fullerenes carbon nanotubes inorganic nanoparticles dendrimers and bionanoparticles and the refining of instrumentation to probe nanoobjects such as scanning force laser scanning fluorescence and electron microscopes have spurred research aimed at probing the influence of particle size and shape on the properties of PMNThe authors thank the Center for Electron Nanoscopy of the Technical University of Denmark The study reported in this communication is partly underpinned by the Directorate for Research of the European Commission in the frame of VII framework program under the contract 213436project acronym Nanotough
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