review · Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part C Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science
Polymer nanocomposites, where nanoparticles are dispersed in a polymer matrix to improve mechanical and thermophysical properties, serve critical applications in sectors such as automotive and aircraft manufacturing. Fabricating these materials requires methods that achieve uniform nanoparticle dispersion without aggregation. Common production methods include melt-mixing, standard mixing, in-situ polymerisation, electrospinning, and selective laser sintering. In melt-mixing, aggregation issues can be resolved using water, atomic layer deposition, or plasma-assisted mechanochemistry, whilst high-frequency sonication achieves similar dispersion improvements for standard mixing techniques. In-situ polymerisation yields thermodynamically stable nanocomposites, and electrospinning is particularly suitable for generating porous structures. Furthermore, selective laser sintering presents clear advantages in preventing nanoparticle agglomeration. Each fabrication route offers distinct working principles, advantages, and drawbacks depending on the desired composite characteristics and structural requirements.
Enhancing polymers with nanoparticles improves their mechanical and thermal performance for vital sectors, including aircraft, vehicles, water purification, and energy systems. Achieving these improvements depends on distributing nanoparticles evenly without clumping. Comparing the strengths and limitations of primary fabrication methods helps engineers select appropriate manufacturing routes to produce stable, high-performance materials for demanding industrial uses.
The abstract highlights applications across the automotive and aircraft industries, alongside broader relevance to water treatment and energy conversion. Potential users include composite material manufacturers and industrial engineers seeking to eliminate nanoparticle aggregation. Because this work is a review detailing various fabrication processes, their advantages, and their limitations, it sits at an informational and comparative stage rather than introducing an immediately deployable proprietary product.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
Nanotechnology is the key solution for many human problems such as energy conversion, water treatment, and material science. In composite materials, nanoparticles are dispersed in a matrix material such as metals, ceramics, or polymers to enhance their mechanical and thermophysical properties. Polymer nanocomposite materials found their applications in vital fields such as the automotive and aircraft industries. There are many techniques adopted to produce polymer nanocomposites, and they are summarized and discussed according to our best known in this paper. All techniques aim to produce nanocomposite materials with uniform dispersion and without aggregations. Melt-mixing, mixing, in-situ polymerization, electrospinning, and selective laser sintering techniques are the most commonly used techniques to produce polymer nanocomposite. The utilization of water, atomic layer deposition, and plasma-assisted mechanochemistry are found to eradicate the issue of nanoparticles aggregation for melt-mixing technique. Also, sonication with high frequencies plays the same role for mixing techniques. In-situ polymerization provides fabrication of nanocomposites that are thermodynamically stable. Electrospinning represents an effective method which is suitable for producing porous structures. In addition, fabrication of nanocomposites via selective laser sintering has obvious benefits to overcome the problem of aggregation. The working principles of each technique, including the advantages and disadvantages, are discussed.
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DOI: 10.1177/09544062211055662
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