Effect of Clay on the Properties of Polyoxymethylene/Clay Nanocomposites

Abstract

This work investigated the effect of montmorillonite clay surface modified with 25-30 wt% trimethyl stearyl ammonium (clay) on mechanical, thermal and morphological properties of polyoxymethylene (POM)/clay nanocomposites were investigated. The results showed that POM/clay nanocomposites could maintain or decrease their tensile strength for a certain clay loading range. The Young’s modulus of the nanocomposites increased by adding clay in a range of 0.5-4 wt% while the impact strength showed an increase in a range of 0.5-2 wt%. The percent strain at break of the nanocomposites decreased with increasing filler content. The thermal degradation temperature decreased with an increase of clay content thus the addition of clay did not improve the thermal stability of POM. The microstructure of neat POM and POM/clay nanocomposites was observed that the dispersion of clay was a good in POM matrix at low clay content. The nanocomposites formed the intercalated structure with clay, and the intercalated clay stacks were distributed uniformly in the nanocomposite. The increase of clay content observed increasing of brittleness in POM/clay nanocomposites.