title: Tailoring highly oriented and micropatterned clay/polymer nanocomposites by applying an a.c. electric field.
abstract: Clay/polymer nanocomposites have recently raised much interest because of their widespread industrial applications. Nevertheless, controlling both clay platelet exfoliation and orientation during polymerization still remains challenging. Herein, we report the elaboration of clay/polymer nanocomposite hydrogels from aqueous suspensions of natural swelling clays submitted to high-frequency a.c. electric fields. X-ray scattering experiments have confirmed the complete exfoliation of the clay sheets in the polymer matrix, even after polymerization. Moreover, polarized light microscopy shows that the clay platelets were perfectly oriented by the electric field and that this field-induced alignment was frozen in by in situ photopolymerization. This procedure allowed us to not only produce uniformly aligned samples but also pattern platelet orientation, at length scales down to 20 μm. This straightforward and cheap nanocomposite patterning technique can be easily extended to a wide range of natural or synthetic inorganic anisotropic particles.
authors: Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, UMR 8502, Paris-Sud University, Bâtiment 510, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France. erwan-nicolas.paineau@u-psud.fr
authors: Erwan
authors: E
authors: Paineau
authors: Ivan
authors: I
authors: Dozov
authors: Isabelle
authors: I
authors: Bihannic
authors: Christophe
authors: C
authors: Baravian
authors: Marie-Eve M
authors: ME
authors: Krapf
authors: Adrian-Marie
authors: AM
authors: Philippe
authors: Stéphan
authors: S
authors: Rouzière
authors: Laurent J
authors: LJ
authors: Michot
authors: Patrick
authors: P
authors: Davidson