Effect of Glass Filler Geometry on the Mechanical and Optical Properties of Highly Transparent Polymer Composite

Ilya Kobykhno; Andrey Kiryanov; Victor Klinkov; Alla Chebotareva; Stanislav Evlashin; Dandan Ju; Yiyong Wu; Alexander Semencha; Huiyang Zhao; Oleg Tolochko

doi:10.3390/polym14235179

Effect of Glass Filler Geometry on the Mechanical and Optical Properties of Highly Transparent Polymer Composite

Polymers (Basel). 2022 Nov 28;14(23):5179. doi: 10.3390/polym14235179.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, Polytechnicheskaya, 29, 195251 St. Petersburg, Russia.
² Skobeltsyn Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow State University, Leninskie Gory, GSP-1, 119991 Moscow, Russia.
³ Center for Materials Technologies, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Bolshoy Boulevard 30, Bld. 1, 121205 Moscow, Russia.
⁴ Research Center of Space Physics and Science, Harbin Institute of Technology, Xida St. 92, Harbin 150001, China.
⁵ School of Material Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Xida St. 92, Harbin 150001, China.

Abstract

In this work, we studied the influence of the geometry and degree of filling of glass dispersed particles on the optical and mechanical properties of flexible high-transmission composites, based on thermoplastic polyurethane. Glass spheres, glass flake and milling glass fiber were used as fillers. Studies of mechanical properties have shown that the introduction of any filler leads to a decrease in tensile strength and an increase in the elastic modulus of the composite material, however, with the introduction of glass flakes and milling glass fiber, a significant increase in the yield strength of the material is observed. The optical properties of composites with glass spheres decrease exponentially with an increase in the volume fraction of the filler. With an increase in the concentration of glass flakes and milling glass fiber to 10 vol.%, a sharp decrease in transmission is observed. With a further increase in concentration, the orientation of the filler along the film occurs, due to which the transmission in the visible range increases to values close to those of a pure polymer.

Keywords: glass fiber; glass flake; mechanical properties; optical properties; optical transparence composite; thermoplastic polyurethane.

Grants and funding

The research is partially funded by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation as part of World-class Research Center program (contract No. 075-15-2022-311 dated from 20 April 2022).