Issue 4, 2022

Enhancing the mechanical strength and toughness of epoxy resins with linear POSS nano-modifiers

Abstract

Glass transition temperature (Tg) always deteriorates while improving the strength of epoxy resins which inherently suffer from brittleness. Herein, novel linear polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (POSS)-epoxy nano-modifiers are synthesized with variable contents of POSS. The thermomechanical properties and chemical structure study of the POSS-epoxy indicates significant differences of the rigid POSS content in the linear nano-modifiers. By taking advantage of the synergistic effect of nanofillers and linear polymers, the modifiers disperse at the molecular level when POSS-epoxy is utilized as a co-curing agent for epoxy resins, allowing the applied force to be transferred into the polymer matrix. A good balance of Tg, stiffness, and fracture toughness can be obtained. At 5 wt% of the nano-modifier, the resultant epoxy resins showed 27% enhancement in the Young's modulus relative to the neat epoxy. In addition, the Tg and strength of epoxy thermosets are improved due to the increased cross-linking density, rough surface and tortuous path that resulted in good dispersion of energy during crack propagation.

Graphical abstract: Enhancing the mechanical strength and toughness of epoxy resins with linear POSS nano-modifiers

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
19 okt 2021
Accepted
27 dek 2021
First published
07 yan 2022
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Nanoscale Adv., 2022,4, 1151-1157

Enhancing the mechanical strength and toughness of epoxy resins with linear POSS nano-modifiers

H. Chi, G. Zhang, N. Wang, Y. Wang, T. Li, F. Wang and C. Ye, Nanoscale Adv., 2022, 4, 1151 DOI: 10.1039/D1NA00757B

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements