Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.49, No.23, 11985-11990, 2010
Linear Viscoelasticity of Spherical SiO2 Nanoparticle-Tethered Poly(butyl acrylate) Hybrids
The melt state linear viscoelastic properties of spherical silica nanoparticles with grafted poly(n-butyl acrylate) chains of varying molecular weight were probed using linear small amplitude dynamic oscillatory measurements and complementay linear stress relaxation measurements. While the pure silica-tethered polymer hybrids with no added homopolymer exhibit solid-like response, addition of matched molecular weight free matrix homopolymer chains to this hybrid, at low concentrations of added homopolymer, maintains the solid-like response with a lowered modulus that can be factored into a silica concentration dependence and a molecular weight dependence. While the silica concentration dependence of the modulus is strong, the dependence on molecular weight is weak. On the other hand, increasing the amount of added homopolymer changes the viscoelastic response to that of a liquid with a relaxation time that scales exponentially with hybrid concentration.