A novel approach for preparing exfoliated UV-cured polymer/LDH nanocomposites via pre-exfoliated organic LDH

A novel approach to prepare the exfoliated polymer/layered double hydroxide (LDH) nanocomposites was proposed by synthesizing a pre-exfoliated organic LDH (LDH-SH) firstly, then blended into an acrylic resin, and irradiated by a medium pressure mercury lamp. The LDH-SH was prepared by intercalating LDH with sodium dodecyl sulfate, and then γ-(2,3-epoxypropoxy) propyl trimethoxysilane, followed by grafting with trimethylolpropane thioglycolic acetate. From the X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, high resolution scanning electron microscope (HR-SEM) and high resolution transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM) observation, the LDH-SH lost its ordered stacking-structure and was totally pre-exfoliated. After UV irradiation, the formed polymer/LDH nanocomposite possessed the exfoliated microstructure from the transmission electron microscope (TEM) and HR-TEM observations. The dynamic mechanical thermal analyzer (DMTA) results showed that the storage modulus of nanocomposite with 5% LDH-SH loading increased to 44.2 MPa from 34.6 MPa of the pure polymer, while the tensile strength and persoz hardness were enhanced to 9.3 MPa and 107 s compared with 8.5 MPa and 87 s of the pure polymer, respectively.

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► A novel approach for preparing exfoliated polymer/LDH nanocomposites was proposed.
► The approach was via synthesizing a pre-exfoliated hybrid LDH (LDH-SH).
► LDH-SH was applied to a UV curable system forming a totally exfoliated nanocomposite.
► LDH-SH can be used to prepare most kinds of exfoliated polymer/LDH nanocomposites.