Quantitative Nanoelectrical and Nanomechanical Properties of Nanostructured Hybrid Composites by PeakForce Tunneling Atomic Force Microscopy

Abstract

Hybrid nanocomposites based on poly(styrene-b-ethylene oxide) (PS-b-PEO) block copolymer modified with a mixture of both vanadium and titanium nanoparticles were synthesized via a sol–gel process. With the aim of studying the influence of the addition of V:Ti nanoparticles on the self-assembled PS-b-PEO block copolymer, two different V:Ti mixtures were prepared. Addition of even 60 vol % sol–gel to fabrication of hybrid nanocomposites allows us to reach well-dispersed, uniform in size V:Ti nanoparticles on the substrate surface due to hydrogen-bond formation between the sol–gel network and PEO block. Atomic force microscopy results indicate that increasing of the sol–gel content to 40 vol % leads to change the matrix from an organic (PS-block-rich phase) to inorganic (V:Ti nanoparticles/PEO-block-rich) one without losing high nanometric order due to confinement of the V:Ti nanoparticles in the PEO block. Quantitative nanoelectrical and nanomechanical properties were studied that employed novel powerful Pe...