Synthesis of palygorskite/polystyrene nanocomposites without crosslinked network via in-situ radical bulk polymerization technique

Abstract Clay/polymer nanocomposites have attracted more and more attention owing to their superior performance for potential applications. The in-situ polymerization has been regarded as the promising strategy for the mass production of the clay/polymer nanocomposites with well-defined interfacial property. However, the gelation usually accompanies with the grafting reaction during the polymerization especially for the high aspect ratio nanomaterials, resulting to crosslinked network. In order to solve the problem, the thoil-modified palygorskite nanorods (Pal-SH) were prepared as clay-based chain transfer reagent for the radical bulk polymerization of styrene, as an example. With different dosages of the Pal-SH nanorods from 0.5% to 1.0% and 2.0%, well-defined polystyrene grafted palygorskite nanorods (Pal-PS) were obtained without crosslinked network, with high grafting percentage (PG%) of 40.0, 43.2, and 51.3% respectively. The proposed approach provides a promising technique for the mass production of high aspect ratio nanomaterials-based polymer nanocomposites with well-defined interfacial property, especially avoiding crosslinked network.