Abstract
A non-destructive evaluation (NDE) technique capable of testing the dispersion of nanoparticles in a nanocomposite would be of great use to the industry to check the quality of the products made and to ensure compliance with their specifications. Very few NDE techniques found in the literature can evaluate the level of dispersion of the nanoparticles in the whole nanocomposite. Here, a recently developed NDE technique based on pulsed phase thermography (PPT) in transmission mode was used to assess the particle dispersion in ultra-low, less than 0.05 wt%, Ag enriched polymeric based nanocomposite manufactured with an innovative nano-coating fragmentation technique. The phasegrams obtained with the presented technique clearly showed clusters or bundles of Ag nanoparticles when present, down to the size of 6 µm. Therefore, the new NDE approach can be applied to verify that the expected levels of dispersion are met in the production process.
Highlights
IntroductionNanocomposites (NCs) are gaining more and more attention from the industry [1]
In recent years, nanocomposites (NCs) are gaining more and more attention from the industry [1]
The thermal waves are captured in the form of IR-radiation by the IR-camera placed on the opposite side of the sample
Summary
Nanocomposites (NCs) are gaining more and more attention from the industry [1]. NCs found application in various fields, such as material manufacturing [2], engineering [3], transport [4], electronics [5], food and beverages [6,7], aerospace [8] and pharmaceuticals [9], thanks to their improved properties, with particular regards to mechanical properties [10,11], thermal conductivity in polymers with SWCNT [12,13] and with MWCNT [14], electrical conductivity in NCs with MWCNT [15,16], as well as in the case of AC current with different frequency values [17], graphitized CNT [18], and optical properties in NCs with SWCNT [19,20] and MWCNT [21,22]. The properties of the resulting nanocomposite are strongly dependent on the type of nanoparticles added to the matrix [23,24]. When nanocomposite materials with anti-bacterial properties are required, silver nanoparticles, thanks to their good biocompatibility and anti-bacterial affinity, can be used [25]. It is well known that the level of dispersion of the nanoparticles in the polymer matrix is the parameter that, much more than others, can influence their enhancement capabilities [29,30,31]: a good dispersion level increases the surface contact between the nanoparticles and the matrix and, facilitates their interactions
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