Significant roles of Fe nanoparticles in mediating the thermal properties of polymers

Abstract

In this work, we make efforts to understand how the stability of a polymer is influenced by the presence of metal nanoparticles. Experimental results from binary systems of Fe nanoparticles with polyethylene glycol (PEG), polypropylene glycol (PPG) and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) revealed several novel and unexpected findings. First, the addition of Fe nanoparticles to PEG elicited a moderate increase in thermal stability and a large change in the degradation mechanism of PEG. Such a mechanism transformation was explained by two factors: 1) the atom-molecule interaction between Fe atoms and O atoms in the PEG molecules and 2) the catalytic effect of Fe nanoparticles. Second, there was a structural rearrangement of fragments from PPG chains during heating in the presence of Fe nanoparticles. This provides important information for material recycling. Third, we found that the use of Fe nanoparticles led to a more complete degradation (99.9%) of PTFE, the appearance of the monomer fragment C₂F₄⁺ and an impairment of the etching effect on the quartz injection chamber. We consider that these findings are significant for basic and applied research on polymer materials.