Morphological Investigations of Organic/Inorganic Nanocomposites Fabricated to Achieve Controlled Dispersion at High Loadings

Realization of property enhancements inherent to the presence of nanoparticles continues to be a challenge for the production of bulk nanocomposite materials with commercially available techniques. This study combines twin-screw compounding with surface modification of SiO2 nanoparticles to enable targeted dispersion in a SEBS block copolymer. Production of these composites with high levels of well-dispersed particulates aims to leverage aggregation for production of hierarchical structure. The aggregation state of the particles as well as the level of order in the block copolymer morphology was determined through USAXS and TEM. Particles coated with ligands miscible with the end-blocks of the BCP (minority component) increased dispersion at all loading levels observed up to 10 vol%. Ligands employed to increase miscibility of the nanoparticle with the mid-block (majority component) resulted in large aggregates for all loadings without disturbance of the BCP morphology.