TY - CONF A1 - Ghasem Zadeh Khorasani, Media A1 - Silbernagl, Dorothee A1 - Elert, Anna Maria A1 - Sturm, Heinz T1 - Studies on interphase formation of cured epoxy resin near boehmite surface N2 - The application of inorganic nanoparticles as reinforcement agent for polymer composites is constantly growing. Improving the performance of the material with desirable properties requires understanding of the interaction between polymer chains and nanoparticles and the properties of the interphase as well. Boehmite, a mineral of aluminum with basic unit of AlO(OH), is a novel and promising nanofiller which leads to enhanced performance of polymer composites. It has been recently reported that boehmite nanoparticles have reinforcing effect on epoxy matrix in carbon-fiber composites. It was primarily assumed that these improvements are due to very high Young’s modulus of boehmite particles. However, in our latest study we presented new values for the Young’s modulus of boehmite much lower than those reported earlier. This brings up the importance of interphase properties, e.g. the crosslink density, which can have the dominant role in the overall material property. Nevertheless, due to resolution limitations of conventional nanoprobing approaches, characterization of the interphase between individual particles and matrix is a challenge. In this study, the main goal is to investigate the interphase of the epoxy/boehmite nanocomposites using AFM-based methods. We simplify the three-dimensional nanocomposite system to a two-dimensional horizontally layered sample with a large and easy to access interphase area. For this purpose, 1µm coatings of hydrothermally synthesized boehmite are prepared as the substrate on which the epoxy is later molded and cured. AFM surface potential and force maps were obtained on the cross-sectional cut of epoxy/ boehmite sample. The results show unexpectedly a large interphase area (approx. 1 µm) with different electrical and mechanical properties comparing to bulk epoxy. The average force-distance curves from this region showed more elastic behavior compared to bulk. The underlying mechanism of this influence is not fully understood yet. Thus, further investigation on the interphase region using the novel Nano-IR approach provides more information about the chemical characteristics. Numerical simulation will give complementary information to understand the effect of nanoparticles on the crosslinking density of the interphase. This can be different to bulk epoxy due to either different local temperature gradients or due to a surface selectivity of boehmite towards the monomer molecules. T2 - ICCS20–20th International Conference on Composite Structures CY - Paris, France DA - 04.09.2017 KW - AFM KW - AFM-IR KW - ImAFM KW - Boehmite KW - Epox KW - Nanocomposite KW - Interphase KW - Nanomechanics PY - 2017 AN - OPUS4-50689 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -