Biodegradable Polymer-Clay Nanocomposite Fire Retardants via Emulsifier-free Emulsion Polymerization

Biodegradable Polymer-Clay Nanocomposite Fire Retardants via Emulsifier-free Emulsion Polymerization 

Department of Chemistry, Utkal University, Vani Vihar, Bhubaneswar 751 004, India 

In recent years, MMT has attracted great academic and commercial interest because of its high aspect ratio of silicate nanolayers, high surface area and wide applications in polymer materials.Much attention has been paid to polymer nanocomposites, essentially polymer MMT or polymer-SS nanocomposites, which exhibit physical and chemical properties that are dramatically 

Biodegradable Polymer-Clay Nanocomposite Fire Retardants 125 

Despite the considerable number of studies concerned with the preparation of various types of polymer-silicate nanocomposites by the conventional emulsion technique, there has been no report on syntheses of novel polymer-silicate nanocomposites by the emulsifier-free emulsion method. The advantage of this method of polymerization is that a high concentration of surfactant/ emulsifier is considered to be one of the main drawbacks of emulsion polymerization due to difficulties in removing the residual emulsifier from the nanoparticle surface.The recently developed unconventional emulsifier-free emulsion polymerization enables the latter problem to be resolved and composite nanoparticles with tailored morphology to be synthesized. 

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