Samuel Heroy (UNC-CH), GMA Seminar

Title: Modeling Polymer Nanocomposites

Abstract: Carbon Nanotubes (CNT’s) are potentially extremely valuable vehicles for mechanical reinforcement in the synthesis of new materials–individual CNT’s have an elastic modulus of ~1 TPa and tensile strength up to 63 GPa. In addition, they have desirable thermal and electrical properties. However, taking full advantage of these properties is difficult for several reasons–in industrially practical quantities, CNTs tend to cluster together (and are notoriously difficult to separate) and are generally difficult to place in ordered positions; additionally, inducing bonding between CNT’s and host materials is a difficult challenge in materials science. In this (preliminary) study, I work closely with the Dingemans lab (UNC Applied Physical Sciences) on development of a CNT-polymer composite in which host polymer forms a crystal coating around the nanotubes, thereby generating an (potentially) very useful material. This talk will focus on modeling this novel nanocomposite, and accurately characterizing the crystallinity, heterogeneity, and mechanical properties of the material.