Surfactant-Free, Melt-Processable Metal-Polymer Hybrid Materials: Use of Graphene as a Dispersing Agent

摘要

Hybrid materials combine properties of metals, oxides, and polymers by mixing these most different materials at the nanometer level, and strongly rely on interface stabilization. In particular the mechanical incorporation of nanoparticles into engineering thermoplastics (e.g., by melt blending techniques) has offered a continuous challenge to materials science as thermodynamic and kinetic barriers inhibit the dispersal of inorganic nanoparticles with generally high surface energies within hydrophobic polymer matrices. The physical reason for the dispersion difficulties are strong adhesion forces that act between particles with high surface energy, whilst the polymer has a lower surface energy (see Table 1 for a representative overview). The adhesion forces depend on the particle's material properties and the polymer.