MICROSTRUCTURE STUDY OF ACRYLIC POLYMER-SILICA NANOCOMPOSITE SURFACE BY SCANNING FORCE MICROSCOPY

Scanning force microscopy (SFM) was successfully used to study the mic rostructures of acrylic polymer-silica nanocomposite surfaces processe d by the sol-gel method. We observed excellent flatness of the dip-coa ted nanocomposite surfaces (root mean square roughness=0.345 nm; mean roughness=0.270 nm), probably due to the levelling effect of the dippi ng solution. SFM revealed that acrylic polymer and silica were hybridi zed on surfaces, with domain sizes from several to 30 nm, where fricti on forces between silica and acrylic polymer against the Si3N4 SFM tip were 35 and 1.6 nN respectively, for a 0.1 nN load. Copyright (C) 199 6 Elsevier Science Ltd.