Effect of gamma irradiation on the mechanical properties of PVC/ZnO polymer nanocomposite

Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) based nanocomposite with different weight ratios of Zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles is prepared by using a gel-like technique. The weight-ratio of ZnO nanoparticles, in a range of 2.5-10 wt%, is used to prepare nanocomposites' in the tetrahydrofuran (THF) solvent. The as-prepared samples are exposed to gamma (γ) radiation at different doses in a range of 5-40 kGy. The mechanical properties of irradiated samples are compared to that of unirradiated samples. For unirradiated samples, the elasticity is found to increase with the addition of ZnO nanoparticles. However, the plastic region of the stress-strain curve gets slightly affected on increasing the concentration of ZnO. Additionally, the elastic modulus is noticed to drop exponentially with ZnO concentration. For pure PVC, a slight dependence of stress-strain curves on the gamma irradiation doses has also been detected. Further, the gamma irradiation dose results in a detectable decrease of elastic modulus for pure and low weight-ratio ZnO nanoparticles. However, the irradiation dose does not have any effect on the elastic modulus for the 10 wt %, which is the highest weight ratio used in this study.