Viscoelastic behavior of poly(acrylonitrile)/attapulgite nanocomposite solution

The major objective of this work is to understand the effects of temperature and clay content on the rheological properties of poly(acrylonitrile) (PAN)/attapulgite (AT) nanocomposite solution. The rheological properties have been studied in both linear and nonlinear viscoelastic response regions. In the linear regime, the nanocomposites exhibit higher storage modulus (G′) and loss modulus (G″) with increasing clay content and the results showed that the clay effect on the elastic improvement of the matrix is much more significant at high temperature than that at lower one. This may attribute to different polymer–clay interaction and the clay dispersion at different thermal state of the matrix. The similar temperature and clay content effect has also been observed in the nonlinear regime and the results further indicated that the presence of small amount of AT nanorods improved the fluidity of the PAN solutions. Finally, a comparison has been made between the complex and steady viscosities to verify the applicability of the empirical Cox-Merz rule and the phenomenological evaluation for the ratio of the topological structure disparity of the matrix in shear thinning process has also been proposed.