Studies on the preparation and structure of polyacrylamide/α-zirconium phosphate nanocomposites

In this paper, a novel polyacrylamide(PAM)/α-zirconium phosphate(α-ZrP) nanocomposite was successfully synthesized by exfoliation-adsorption and in-situ intercalative polymerization. The microstructure of PAM/α-ZrP nanocomposites was confirmed by X-ray diffraction measurement, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high resolution electron microscopy (HRTEM). The results suggested that the α-ZrP lamellae were dispersed well in PAM matrix, which indicated the formation of the exfoliated nanocomposites in the low inorganic loading of α-ZrP (≤5 wt%). With the increase of the inorganic loadings, the intercalated structure of PAM/α-ZrP nanocomposites was dominant with the d-spacings of about 1.50–1.58 nm corresponding to the inorganic loadings in the range of 10–20 wt%. Moreover, besides the electrostatic adsorption, it was also found that there may be some weak effect such as hydrogen bonding or protonation between the host and guest investigated using fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and thermogravimetric (TG )analysis, which resulted in the enhancement of the thermal properties on the decomposition process of PAM/α-ZrP nanocomposites by the retardant effect of the exfoliated or intercalated α-ZrP nanometer lamellae.