Impact of Molybdenum Disulfide Nano‐Sheets on Structural, Thermal, Mechanical, and Dielectric Attributes of Sago‐Starch

ABSTRACT Flexible, bio‐compatible polymer nanocomposites (NCs) comprising of Sago‐Starch (SST) as host matrix and molybdenum disulfide (MoS ₂ ) as nanofiller (MoS ₂ SST) have been fabricated utilizing solution casting approach. X‐ray diffraction (XRD) analysis suggests the hexagonal phase while field‐emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR‐TEM) depict the nano‐sheet like morphology of MoS ₂ . Universal testing machine (UTM) reveals that tensile strength ( T _ST ) of SST increases from 9.45 ± 1.2 MPa to 19.80 ± 1.1 MPa and young's modulus ( E _MOD ) increases from 264.8 ± 2.3 MPa to 1406.3 ± 5.1 MPa after the addition of 10 wt% of MoS ₂ . The average roughness ( R _a ) of virgin SST calculated using atomic force microscopy (AFM) comes out to be 1.31 ± 0.03 nm and it increases to 5.88 ± 0.5 nm on adding 10 wt% MoS ₂ nano‐sheets. Thermo‐gravimetric analysis (TGA) reveals that the thermal stability of SST matrix increases after the addition of MoS ₂ nano‐sheets. Dielectric permittivity ( ε ′) of SST increases from 27.5 to 2653.9 at a frequency of 100 Hz on addition of 10 wt% of MoS ₂ . Impedance analysis demonstrate that value of grain resistance ( R _g ) of SST decreases from 54 to 5.3 MΩ for 10 wt% MoS ₂ SST NC.