Anisotropic Reinforcement of Nanocomposites Tuned by Magnetic Orientation of the Filler Network

摘要

In the past two decades, the extension of the range of fillers for polymer reinforcement to nanometer-sized filler materials has lead to progress in both the design of innovative materials and understanding of their properties. Among the future challenges, the improvement and possibly tuning of a specific material property through a simple external trigger will be of particular importance. A promising pathway to achieve such a design is to introduce a new degree of freedom, i.e., by using magnetic instead of classical inorganic particles as filler. The design of a functional nanocomposite material with the possibility to orient the filler inside the matrix by using a simple external magnetic field should allow the tuning of macroscopic material properties, in particular the mechanical ones. In the past twenty years this concept has been explored by many research teams, most of whom have been studying the effect of micrometer-sized particles or fibres (needles). Two routes are possible when using magnetic filler particles: applying the field on the material after synthesis or applying it during the synthesis.