Evaluation of dispersion degree of nanoparticles in TiO2/epoxy resin nanocomposites

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the dispersion degree of particles using a nanoindentation test for titanium oxide nanoparticles/epoxy resin nanocomposites. Thus, the effects of the particle size and weight fraction, dispersion agent, and position of the sample on the modulus and degree of particle dispersion in the nanocomposites were investigated. As a result, the dispersion degree of large particles was found to be better than that of smaller particles in composites. It could be found that the aggregation or agglomeration of small particles with large surface energy occurred more easily in nanocomposites because of the large specific surface area. The moduli of the upper side of the film-shaped sample obtained from a nanoindentation test were low scattering, while the values for the bottom side were high scattering. Thus, the dispersion situation of the nanoparticles on the upper side of film-shaped samples could be considered to be better than that for the bottom side. This could be concluded due to the non-uniform nanoparticle dispersion in the same sample. The modulus obtained from nanoindentation test increased slightly with the content of nanoparticles and increased with the indented depth for the same sample. The latter is presumably due to the increase in the accumulated particles facing the indenter with the indented depth. The nanoindentation test was found to be a useful method to evaluate the dispersion status of nanoparticles in nanocomposites.