Intercalated poly(amide-imide) (PAI)/modified layered double hydroxide (LDH) nanocomposites (NC)s were synthesized by the solution intercalation method. Modified LDH was synthesized from the co-precipitation reaction of the Al(NO 3 ) 3 Á 9H 2 O, Mg(NO 3 ) 2 Á 6H 2 O and N,N'-(pyromellitoyl)-bis-valine under ultrasound irradiation. An optically active amino acid containing PAI was synthesized by direct polymerization reaction of chiral diacid and 3,5-diamino-N-(thiazole-2-yl)benzamide under green condition. The synthesized materials were characterized by X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques. TEM and FE-SEM analysis confirmed that modified LDH was dispersed within the polymer matrix in intercalated and exfoliated forms.Keywords Layered double hydroxides; Nanocomposite; Poly(amide-imide); (S)-Valine amino acid; X-ray diffraction
INTRODUCTIONInorganic=polymer nanocomposites (NCs) are a class of composites in which the inorganic phase dimensions are in the order of nanometers. These NCs contain only a few percent of well-dispersed inorganic components of nanometer size in an organic polymer, and exhibit better properties than pure polymers [1][2][3][4][5][6] . The most part of previous studied has been focused on NCs based on clay and layered silicates because the starting clay materials are easily available and their intercalation chemistry has been studied for a long time [7][8][9][10][11] .