Graphene Oxide as a Prospective Graft in Polyethylene Glycol for Enhancing the Toughness of Epoxy Nanocomposites

Abstract

Polyethylene glycol (PEG) was successfully grafted onto the surface of graphene oxide (GO) by the “grafting to” technique. PEG, GO as well as the PEG grafted GO (GO‐g‐PEG) was successfully incorporated into an epoxy matrix and subsequently cured using diethylenetoluenediamine (DETDA) to make epoxy nanocomposites. Mechanical, thermal, and rheological properties of the epoxy nanocomposites were studied to check the effectiveness of these fillers in the epoxy matrix. An improvement of 255% and 334% at a very low filler loading of about 0.1 wt% was observed in the fracture toughness of GO and GO‐g‐PEG loaded systems versus the neat epoxy. Toughening mechanisms are also explained by analyzing SEM images of the fractured surface. Modeling of rheological properties was carried out by following time‐independent Newtonian model. The homogeneity of the epoxy filler systems are explained with the help of Cole–Cole plots. The thermal stability of the filler loaded epoxy composites was examined in detail by TGA. Improvements in mechanical properties reveal the potential benefit of the grafting process in epoxy toughening. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 60:773–781, 2020. © 2020 Society of Plastics Engineers

Superhydrophobic graphene-based materials with self-cleaning and anticorrosion performance: An appraisal of neoteric advancement and future perspectives

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Synthesis of self‐assembled and porous nano titania‐graphene oxide hybrids for toughening the epoxy

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Thermal, mechanical, and tribological properties of epoxy polymer/EPU blends reinforced by low concentration of octaaminophenyl POSS

“…X-ray diffraction (XRD) was performed on a Rigaku Demka D/max 2500 XRD system (Japan) with Cu kα radiation (λ = 1.5418 Å) at a voltage of 40 kV and current of 200 mA, and with a scanning angle of 1.2 to 10 . The spacing of the layers (d) was calculated using Bragg's law: 2d sinθ = nλ (1).…”

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