• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.100-105
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• 2011

The relative viscosity was measured at different filler loadings for a cycloaliphatic epoxy resin and hexahydro-4-methylphthalic anhydride hardener system filled with micro/nano hybrid silica. Various empirical models were fitted to the experimental data and a fitting parameter such as critical filler fractions (${\phi}_{max}$) was estimated. Among the models, the Zhang-Evans model gave the best fit to the viscosity data. For all the silica loadings used, ln (relative viscosity) varied linearly with filler loadings. Using the Zhang-Evans model and the linearity characteristics of the viscosity change, simple methods to predict the relative viscosity below ${\phi}_{max}$ are presented in this work. The predicted viscosity values from the two methods at hybrid silica fractions of $\phi$ = 0.086 and 0.1506 were confirmed for a micro:nano = 1:1 hybrid filler. As a result, the difference between measured and predicted values was less than 11%, indicating that the proposed predicting methods are in good agreement with the experiment.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.288-296
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• 2009

In this study, the silica-based hybrid material with high barrier property was prepared by incorporating ethylene-vinyl alcohol (EVOH) copolymer, which has been utilized as packaging materials due to its superior gas permeation resistance, during sol-gel process. In preparation of this EVOH/$SiO_2$ hybrid coating materials, the (3-glycidoxy-propyl)-trimethoxysilane (GPTMS) as a silane coupling agent was employed to promote interfacial adhesion between organic and inorganic phases. As confirmed from FT-IR analysis, the physical interaction between two phases was improved due to the increased hydrogen bonding, resulting in homogeneous microstructure with dispersion of nano-sized silica particles. However, depending on the range of content of added silane coupling agent (GPTMS), micro-phase separated microstructure in the hybrid could be observed due to insufficient interfacial attraction or possibility of polymerization reaction of epoxide ring in GPTMS. The oxygen barrier property of the mono-layer coated BOPP (biaxially oriented polypropylene) film was examined for the hybrids containing various GPTMS contents. Consequently, it is revealed that GPTMS should be used in an optimum level of content to produce the high barrier EVOH/$SiO_2$ hybrid material with an improved optical transparency and homogeneous phase morphology.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.174-181
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• 2007

In this study, $SiO_2/poly(ethylene-co-vinyl$ alcohol)(EVOH) hybrid coating materials with gas barrier property could be produced using sol-gel method. The biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) substrate with surface pretreatment was coated with the prepared hybrid sols containing various inorganic silicate component by a spin coating method. Crystallization behavior of the hybrids was investigated in terms of analysis of X-ray diffraction and cooling thermogram from DSC experiment. From the morphological observation of the $SiO_2/EVOH$ hybrid gel, it was confirmed that there existed an optimum content of inorganic silicate precursor, Tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS), to produce hybrid materials with dense microstructure, exhibiting uniformly dispersed silica particles with average size below 100 nm. When TEOS was added at below or above the optimum content, particle clusters with large domain were observed, resulting in phase separation. This morphological result was found to be in good agreement with that of oxygen permeability of the hybrid coated films. In the case of film coated with hybrid prepared from addition of 0.01 - 0.02mol of TEOS, a remarkable improvement in barrier property could be obtained, however, with the addition of TEOS more than 0.04 mol, the barrier property was dramatically reduced because of phase separation and micro-crack formation on the film surface.