Abstract
polymer nanocomposites play a critical role in various industries, including packaging, sensors, biomedicine, sports equipment, and automotive manufacturing, due to their unique properties and customizable design. To maximize their performance and reliability, a comprehensive understanding of their mechanical behavior is paramount. The evolution of mechanical properties by incorporation of nanoparticles is still far from well understood even for very common polymer nanocomposite like PMMA/TiO2. The aim of the current work is to study the change in mechanical properties of PMMA/TiO2 due to the change in electronic structure of nanocomposite as a result of systematic variation of TiO2. In this research, the electronic structure of the PMMA/TiO2 nanocomposite at different wt% of TiO2 are studied and the mechanical properties of these nanocomposites are also estimated using Density Functional Theory (DFT). The mechanical properties of PMMA/TiO2 thin films with different TiO2 wt% are meticulously examined experimentally using the nanoindentation technique at various loading rates. The mechanical properties obtained from DFT analysis matches well with the experimental study which indicates a strong correlation between the electronic structure and the mechanical properties. The study reveals that there exist an optimum TiO2 wt% beyond which the mechanical properties are not increasing due to the electronic configuration of the nanocomposite.
Published Version
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