Atomic Force Microscopy Tracking of Nanoparticle Migration in Semicrystalline Polymers.

ACS Macro Lett

Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont 05405, United States.

Published: June 2022

We present tracking of silica nanoparticle (NP) migration from a poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) melt into interlamellar region using atomic force microscopy (AFM). Our results confirm the previous hypothesis that NPs migrate into the interlamellar regions at crystallization growth rates smaller than a critical value under isothermal conditions. Under these slow crystallization conditions, bare silica NPs are rejected as defects by the growing crystal of PEO, and the imaging on the large (50 nm) NPs helps track the migration into the amorphous zones. We extend this AFM technique to estimate lamellar growth rates that correlate with spherulite growth rates determined by polarized light optical microscopy (PLOM) but at smaller undercoolings than are typical for PLOM.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acsmacrolett.1c00778DOI Listing

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