Abstract
To develop wear resistant nanocomposite coating materials, the authors treated nanosilica
first by introducing a certain amount of grafting polymers onto the particles in terms of an irradiation
technique. Through irradiation grafting, the nanoparticle agglomerates turn into a nano-composite
microstructure, which in turn built up a strong interfacial interaction with the surrounding epoxy
matrix during the subsequent mixing and consolidation. The experimental results indicated that the
addition of the grafted nanosilica into epoxy significantly reduced wear rate and frictional coefficient
of the matrix at low filler loading. Compared with the cases of microsized silica and untreated
nanosilica, the employment of grafted nanosilica provided the composites with much higher
tribological performance enhancement efficiency.