| Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 148673 | Chemical Engineering Journal | 2013 | 8 Pages |
•PODA is very good absorbent of organic solvents and oils.•The oil sorbent PODA switches to hydrosorbent on addition of Au nanoparticles.•PODA/Au nanocomposites showed high ionic property and conductivity than PODA.•The PODA/Au hydrogels show high pH and salt sensitive swelling behavior.•A probable mechanism to account for the observation is also discussed.
In this paper we have synthesized Poly-9-octadecenylacrylate (PODA) and Poly-9-octadecenylacrylate/Au (PODA/Au) nanocomposites and characterized the polymer by Fourier Transformed Infrared spectrometer, Scanning Electron Microscopy, Thermogravimetric Analysis and X-ray Diffraction study. It is observed that the swelling properties of PODA and that of PODA/Au nanocomposites are completely different. PODA is found to have high swelling ratio with most of organic solvents like chloroform, tetrahydrofuran, benzene, toluene, pyridine and oils like kerosene and gasoline. PODA/Au nanocomposites, on the other hand, are sorbent to water, salt solutions and alcohol/water mixtures. Alternating current impedance measurements show that there is a sharp decrease in impedance values on addition of Au nanoparticles to PODA. The AC conductivity values at 35 °C for PODA is found to be 7.60 × 10−9 S cm−1, while that of [PODA/Au] in the ratios 1:0.0117 M, 1:0.0233 M and 1:0.0397 M increases to 9.86 × 10−7, 1.14 × 10−5 and 1.19 × 10−4 S cm−1 respectively. Ionic transport number measurement shows that while PODA does not have any ionic contribution, PODA/Au nanocomposites have up to 40% ionic conduction. A possible mechanism to explain this switching from oil-sorbent to hydrosorbent in PODA and PODA/Au nanocomposites is also discussed.
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