Improving the Damping Properties of Nanocomposites by Monodispersed Hybrid POSS Nanoparticles: Preparation and Mechanisms

Wei Wei; Yingjun Zhang; Meihua Liu; Yifan Zhang; Yuan Yin; Wojciech Stanislaw Gutowski; Pengyang Deng; Chunbai Zheng

doi:10.3390/polym11040647

Improving the Damping Properties of Nanocomposites by Monodispersed Hybrid POSS Nanoparticles: Preparation and Mechanisms

Polymers (Basel). 2019 Apr 9;11(4):647. doi: 10.3390/polym11040647.

Authors

Wei Wei¹, Yingjun Zhang², Meihua Liu³, Yifan Zhang⁴, Yuan Yin⁵, Wojciech Stanislaw Gutowski⁶, Pengyang Deng⁷, Chunbai Zheng⁸

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of High-Performace Synthetic Rubber and its Composite Materials, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Renmin Street 5625, Changchun 130022, China. weiwei@ciac.ac.cn.
² CAS Key Laboratory of High-Performace Synthetic Rubber and its Composite Materials, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Renmin Street 5625, Changchun 130022, China. zyj13125823573@163.com.
³ CAS Key Laboratory of High-Performace Synthetic Rubber and its Composite Materials, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Renmin Street 5625, Changchun 130022, China. liumh@ciac.ac.cn.
⁴ CAS Key Laboratory of High-Performace Synthetic Rubber and its Composite Materials, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Renmin Street 5625, Changchun 130022, China. yfzhang@ciac.ac.cn.
⁵ CAS Key Laboratory of High-Performace Synthetic Rubber and its Composite Materials, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Renmin Street 5625, Changchun 130022, China. yuany@ciac.ac.cn.
⁶ CAS Key Laboratory of High-Performace Synthetic Rubber and its Composite Materials, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Renmin Street 5625, Changchun 130022, China. voytek.gutowski@csiro.au.
⁷ CAS Key Laboratory of High-Performace Synthetic Rubber and its Composite Materials, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Renmin Street 5625, Changchun 130022, China. pydeng@ciac.ac.cn.
⁸ CAS Key Laboratory of High-Performace Synthetic Rubber and its Composite Materials, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Renmin Street 5625, Changchun 130022, China. zhengcb@ciac.ac.cn.

Abstract

In this work, a series of heptaphenyl siloxane trisilanol/polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane (T₇-POSS) modified by polyols with different molecular weights were synthesized into liquid-like nanoparticle⁻organic hybrid materials using the grafted-from method. All grafted POSS nanoparticles changed from solid powders to liquid at room temperature. Polyurethane (PU) nanocomposites with POSS contents ranging from 1.75 to 9.72 wt % were prepared from these liquefied polyols-terminated POSS with polyepichlorohydrin (POSS–PECH). Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) were used to characterize the morphology of the POSS–PECH/PU nanocomposites. The results showed that the polyol-terminated POSS particles overcame the nanoagglomeration effect and evenly disperse in the polymeric matrix. The damping factor (tan δ) of resultant nanocomposites increased from 0.90 to 1.16, while the glass transition temperature decreased from 15.8 to 9.4 °C when POSS contents increased from 0 to 9.75 wt %. The gel content, tensile strength and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analyses demonstrated that the molecular thermal movement ability of the polyurethane (PU) matrix increased with increasing POSS hybrid content. Therefore, the improvement of the damping properties of the composites was mainly due to the friction-related losses occurring in the interface region between the nanoparticles and the matrix.

Keywords: POSS; damping; liquefied; monodisperse; nanocomposites.