A pseudo-thermodynamic description of dispersion for nanocomposites.*

Dispersion in polymer nanocomposites is determined by the kinetics of mixing and chemical affinity. Compounds like reinforcing filler/elastomer blends display some similarity to colloidal solutions in that the filler particles are close to randomly dispersed through processing. It is attractive to apply a pseudo-thermodynamic approach taking advantage of this analogy between the kinetics of mixing for polymer nanocomposites and thermally driven dispersion for colloids. Measured values of the pseudo-second order virial coefficient can be used to specify repulsive interaction potentials for coarse grain DPD simulations of filler/elastomer systems. In addition, new methods to quantify the filler percolation threshold and filler mesh size as a function of filler concentration are obtained.

A pseudo-thermodynamic description of dispersion for nanocomposites Y. Jin, et al. Polymer 129 (2017) 32-43.
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