Investigation on the Surface Condition of Gamma Irradiated Silicone Rubber Micro-Nanocomposites

Abstract

Silicone rubber (SR) micro nanocomposites formed with micro-ATH and nano-alumina particles have been subjected to different levels of gamma-ray irradiation to understand the characteristic variation in the surface condition of the material through contact angle measurement, Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) studies, water droplet-initiated corona inception voltage (CIV) measurement and by laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) analysis. It is realized that the recovery rate of silicone rubber micro nanocomposites is less compared with the base SR material. It is observed that, irrespective of the level of irradiation, the contact angle and water droplet initiated CIV of the specimen have shown direct correlation. FTIR analysis clearly indicates variation in methyl group formation on irradiation is less with S2 specimen. It is also observed that fractal dimension calculated by three different techniques for the surface profile data obtained using AFM is in directly in proportion with average surface roughness. In addition, the lacunarity values of the irradiated samples followed the same pattern as that of the average surface roughness. The variation in thermal degradation temperature has been analyzed by adopting thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The calculated plasma temperature values from laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy and the crater depth formed due to laser ablation have shown inverse relationship. Artificial neural network (ANN) has been employed successfully using LIBS data, to understand the level of irradiation of the SR samples. Overall, the silicone rubber micro-nanocomposite sample S2 filled with micro-ATH and nano Alumina has reflected relatively lesser degradation after being exposed to gamma irradiation, over other test specimens.

Enhanced mechanical, thermal, and erosion resistance properties via the synergetic effect of n-ATH/LMGP added ceramifiable silicone rubber composites for electrical insulation

“…The final percentage residual weight of the samples S0, S1, S2, and S3 are 32.22 %, 31.13 %, 40.11 %, and 52.75 % respectively. The thermal stability of ATH filler is well-known from the previous study [27]. The formation of ceramic structure from the melted LMGP/ATH fillers co-filled with silicone matrix could result in a high residual weight of the hybrid silicone rubber sample (refer to Fig.…”

“…shows the thermal parameters calculated from the TG curves. The thermal activation energy from the TG curves has been calculated by the methodology adopted by the following equation mentioned in our earlier study [27].…”

Enhancement of nuclear radiation shielding properties of silicone rubber with γ‐ray irradiation induced graphene oxide modified carbonyl iron powder hybrid fillers

“…Figure 5 shows the thermal stability of the GO/CI and GO‐CI‐10 to GO‐CI‐50, which was studied by TGA 35,39 . As seen from Figure 3, the weight percentage of GO/CI first decrease from 100% to 92.3% at 339°C owing to the GO was degraded and then increase to 95.9% at 794°C since the CI was oxidized by oxygen 40 .…”

“…Silicone rubber (SR) due to its properties like high thermal stability, elasticity and electric insulation can be used as polymer matrix in various fields, such as aviation, spaceflight navigation, energy sources and nuclear power. [34][35][36] Therefore, the goal of the present study is to prepare SR composite with homogeneous-dispersed GO-CI, which shows good γ-ray shielding properties. GO-CI nanocomposites were prepared via a one-step γ-ray irradiation-induced method.…”

Fractal Dimension Image Processing for Feature Extraction and Morphological Analysis: Gd3+/13X/DOX/FA MRI Nanocomposite

“…Lacunarity has been developed to distinguish between distinct texture appearances that may have the same FD value. Lacunarity quantifies the distribution of gap sizes: geometric objects with low lacunarity are homogenous since all gap sizes are the same, while objects with high lacunarity are heterogeneous [36,37]. For the first time, our image processing research relies on a synthetic MRI nanocomposite with anticancer and targeting characteristics.…”