Abstract
Commercial nanocomposites of polyamide 6 (PA6) prepared by melt compounding with organoclay hybrids were characterized by wide- and small-angle x-ray scattering, differential calorimetry, and stretching calorimetry.
Organoclay nanoparticles proved to induce the crystallographic α→γ transformation of PA6, while the matrix crystallinity in nanocomposites remained essentially unchanged. In the range of elastic (reversible) behavior below the apparent yield strains ϵ
*
, the highest Young's moduli E, and the lowest linear thermal expansion coefficients α
L
were observed for dried nanocomposites, while the lowest E and the highest α
L
corresponded to the moisturized, pristine PA6. The endothermal process of shape distortion of the lamellar crystals was assumed to precede the onset of the exothermal process of lamellar fragmentation in the range of inelastic (irreversible) behavior of PA6 above ϵ
*
. The energy balance of the inelastic behavior of nanocomposites was dominated by the endothermal process of lamellar shape distortion.