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In this paper, the electronspun Polylactic acid (PLA)/TiO2 nanofluids (nfs) fibrous membrane with good toughness, hydrophilicity and antibacterial activities are fabricated by taking full advantages of solvent-free TiO2 nfs with amphiphilicity and ionic conductivity. The resulting PLA/TiO2 nfs fibrous membrane exhibits excellent mechanical performance with a tensile strength and elongation at break of 3.68 MPa and 97.32 MPa at 5 wt% loading, respectively, which is 4 and 8 times higher than that of pure PLA, respectively. Additionally, TiO2 nfs can migrate onto the surface of PLA fibers during electrospun process, which significantly enhanced hydrophilicity, antistatic property, moisture sorption capacity and wicking properties of PLA fabrics. Meanwhile, the membrane also showed ultrafast water filtration of 3500 L m−2 h−1 driven by gravity force, which is 10–12 times higher than that of commercial ultrafiltration membrane. After ion-exchange reaction with salt solution, excellent antibacterial activity (against E. coli and S. aureus was 95% and 99.9%, respectively) and separation efficiency (above 90% on E. coli) of the obtained fabrics are also achieved. Overall, organic nfs are an idea candidate for fabricating hydrophilic PLA based biodegradable fabric that can be applied in contaminated water treatment, antibacterial textiles and biodegradable absorption materials.

As a very promising biodegradable polymer, polylactic acid (PLA) has been applied in various fields. Unfortunately, the disadvantages of flammability and large amounts of molten droplets limit its application. In this work, we constructed a novel flame-retardant system by combining the as-prepared bio-based chitosan derivative (CS-TE) and aluminum hypophosphite (AP), and used it to improve the flame retardancy and anti-dripping property. When 3.75 wt% CS-TE and 11.25 wt% AP were incorporated into PLA, the PLA composite had a limiting oxygen index of 28.5 % and achieved a UL-94 V-0 rating as well as showed excellent anti-dripping behavior. Meanwhile, the peak heat release rate and total smoke production decreased by 52.3 % and 73.4 % respectively.

In this study, ferrous oxalate (FeC2O4) used as an effective heterogeneous Fenton catalyst, was inexpensively synthesized by a chemical precipitation method. The attractive efficiency was investigated to demonstrate the underlying mechanism of in-situ reactivation. Based on the mechanism, the important issue of effective performance suggested that the reactivation of active sites enhanced the activation of hydroxyl radical( OH) for degradation. In addition, the catalytic performance for industrial application was studied by evaluating the degradation of methylene blue (MB). In the typical process, a degradation efficiency over 94% was observed at 10 min, and it was improved to over 95% at 3 min under irradiation with a xenon lamp. The catalyst has high operational stability and reusability properties in the process. Remarkably, self-activation of the catalyst was observed during the recycling processes.

It is challenging to fabricate a starch derivative with a plasticizing effect and good dispersion in a poly(lactic acid) matrix to achieve desirable performance. In this study, self-suspended starch fluids composed of modified granules as the core and polyethylene glycol-substituted tertiary amines as the shell were first fabricated via a combined carboxymethylation and acylation reaction. The as-prepared starch fluids exhibited liquid-like behavior and had semiconductor electric conductivity (4.91 × 10−5 S/cm) at room temperature without a solvent. The modulus of starch fluids was clearly reduced under the heating process and exhibited its initial flow properties upon cooling, displaying thermo-reversible behavior. The resultant fluids were then incorporated into a poly(lactic acid) matrix to produce fully biodegradable composites with desirable performance. At a loading level of 10 wt%, starch fluids exhibited simultaneous enhancements in elongation at break (increase of 164.7%) and thermal conductivity (increase of 119%) of PLA composites compared to pure PLA, attributable to the good dispersion and heat-transfer properties of starch fluids. In addition, PLA composites with 10 wt% loading of starch fluids demonstrated excellent antistatic performance (3.08 × 10−4 S/cm), suggesting that polar groups of the PLA structure and PEG groups of starch fluids contributed synergistically to the electrical conductivities of composites. These results indicate that starch fluids are promising antistatic agents and plasticizers for potential applications in biodegradable materials.

In this paper, solvent-free microcrystalline cellulose fluids (MCCFs) with liquid-like behavior were synthesized for the first time through surface grafted polyethylene glycol-substituted tertiary amines into microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) followed by fabricating MCCFs based polylactic acid (PLA) fabric (PLA/MCCFs) via electrospinning method. Owing to low viscosity of MCCFs at room temperature, the addition of MCCFs not only hardly affected the viscosity of electrospinning solution, but also improved the thermal stability of as-prepared PLA fibers. Interestingly, it was amazingly found that surface micropore morphology of PLA fabric diminished, and even disappeared with the content of MCCFs increasing during solvent evaporation process, which may be ascribed to the rapid migration of MCCFs into micropore before solidification. More importantly, the tensile strengths of PLA/MCCFs fabric with 10 wt% content of MCCFs achieved as high as 13.68 MPa, which was 3.18 times as much as that of 4.3 MPa for pure PLA fabric meanwhile the elongation at break of PLA/MCCFs fabrics increased from 13.19% for pure PLA fabric to 48.84% for PLA/MCCFs fabric with 15 wt% content of MCCFs. Beyond above mentioned, the water contact angle for pure PLA fabric was 127° (hydrophobicity), whereas other samples were close to 0° with addition of MCCFs, displaying the super-hydrophilicity. It was possibly inferred that MCCFs quickly migrated towards to the surface of fibers rather than staying inside of the fibers during the electrospinning process, leading to positive effect on the hydrophilicity of the PLA fibers. Finally, it is anticipated that this strategy for fabricating PLA fiber using this novel MCCFs as filler will pave the way for developing high performance PLA composites with desirable properties in the future.

In this study, a new alternative nonwoven based on engineering plastic polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) was explored as the support to construct high performance and safety separator for the first time. By the method of physical coating polymer poly(vinylidene fluoride-hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF-HFP) and inorganic nanoparticle SiO2 on the support, the designed composite separator was successfully obtained for lithium ion battery. Systematic investigations ranging from physical properties, thermal properties to electrochemical performances were carried out. It was found that compared with commercialized polyolefin separator, PPS nonwoven-based composite separator possessed higher porosity, air permeability, improved electrolyte wettability and electrolyte uptake, thus being helpful for lithium ion transfer between electrodes and increasing the ionic conductivity. These behaviors accordingly endowed battery with superior discharge capacity at various discharge current rates from 0.2 C to 2 C. Moreover, the composite separator was observed to exhibit excellent dimensional stability even after thermal treatment at 250 °C and present good flame retardant ability. The afore-mentioned outstanding performances of PPS nonwoven-based composite separator would shed light on the development of high power lithium ion battery.

It is always a challenge to prepare multifunctional epoxy resins (EP) composites with excellent flame retardance, mechanical property and high transparency. In this work, a reactive flame-retardant (BDO) was synthesized from DOPO, 3,5-diamino-triazolz and thiophene-2-formaldehyde, and taken to prepare EP/BDO composites. Surprisingly, benefitting from the synergy of efficient flame retardant unit (DOPO structure), catalytic curing unit (triazole structure) and optical functional structure (thiophene-2-formaldehyde), the EP composites with excellent comprehensive performance was obtained. In detailed, after adding only 5 wt% BDO, the EP composites passed the UL-94 V-0 level, and the limiting oxygen index was increased to 33% from 22.5% of neat EP. At the same time, EP/BDO-5 showed obvious heat suppression and smoke suppression effects. Besides, EP/BDO-5 presented excellent mechanical strength, that the tensile strength and bending strength were increased by 25% and 30% compared with neat EP. Moreover, EP/BDO composites maintained the same good light transmittance as neat EP, and also presented enhanced Tg and dielectric property. In addition, the dual phase flame-retardant mechanism was revealed through systematically analyzing residues after combustion and the gaseous phase products of flame retardant. The above results indicated EP/BDO composites with excellent comprehensive performance possessed a great potential application in high-performance composites fields.

The simultaneous achievement of ultrafast water vapor transport and evaporation, robust mechanical properties, rapid heat dissipation, and excellent antibacterial activity is still highly challenging for advanced bio-based degradable textile composites. Herein, multifunctional biodegradable composite fibers were designed via converting the cellulose powder into solvent-free spherical cellulose crystal fluids (CNCfs) followed by embedding into bio-based polylactic acid (PLA) fibrous membrane using the electrospinning. By taking full advantage of the low viscosity, amphiphilicity and high dispersion of CNCfs, the as-prepared bio-based fibrous membranes with tunable surface chemical and excellent mechanical properties (simultaneous plasticizing and reinforcement) were obtained. Due to the unique bilayer ion structure of the CNCfs located on the surface of PLA fiber after the electrospinning process, the fibrous membrane shows prominent superhydrophilicity (water contact angle of 0°) along with enhanced absorption water capacity and water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) of 3.612 kg m−2 h−1 (81 times higher than the pure PLA fibrous membrane). Moreover, the hygroscopicity-inspired design also endows PLA/CNCfs fibrous membrane with antistatic performance, rapid heat dissipation (decreased by 2 °C relative to the PLA bulk) with high thermal conductivity of 0.27 W/mK and excellent antibacterial activity of 98.5% and 92.7% against E. coli and S. aureus, respectively. Overall, this facile and effective strategy provides a promising route for the fabrication of multifunctional biodegradable fibrous membranes for use in environmental-friendly medical textiles, personal protection and human health applications.

A convenient and green approach was utilized to prepare the suspended carbon black fluids (SCBF) using carboxylic CB nanoparticles with diameters of 15nm as the core and poly(ethylene oxide)-block-poly(propylene oxide)-block-poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO-b-PPO-b-PEO) as surface modifier via hydrogen bonding interaction. It was found that when the total polymer content (strongly adsorbed layer and weakly adsorbed or free layer) was greater than 60wt%, the SCBF exhibited liquid-like behavior without solvent. More interestingly, the flow mechanism mainly related to surface polymer content, which greatly differed from ionically or covalently nanofluids systems. Besides, the thermal, dispersibility, electrical conductivity properties and rheological behaviors, as well as microstructure of SCBF were systematically investigated using various methods. Moreover, the SCBF as fillers were used to prepare SCBF/Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) composites for producing the simultaneous reinforcement and plasticization effect due to the unique fluidity of SCBF and interfacial interactions between the PVA molecules and SCBF via hydrogen bondings. Keywords: Nanofluids, Reinforcement, hydrogen bonds, Nanocomposites

To improve water stability of hydrophilic nanofibers, photocrosslinked maleilated chitosan/methacrylated poly (vinyl alcohol) (MCS/MPVA) bicomponent nanofibrous scaffolds were successfully obtained by electrospinning of aqueous MCS/MPVA solution and consequent photopolymerization. The parameters of MCS/MPVA solutions such as viscosity and conductivity were measured to evaluate electrospinnability of the blend solutions. The bicomponent nanofibrous scaffolds were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), respectively. SEM results indicated that MCS/MPVA weight ratios significantly influenced the morphology and diameter distribution of the nanofibers. XRD and DSC investigated that there was strong interaction caused by hydrogen bonding between molecular chain of MCS and MPVA. Water stability test confirmed that the photocrosslinked matrix with a MCS/MPVA ratio of 10/90 retained excellent integrity of the fibrous structure in water. The in vitro cytotoxicity evaluation revealed that photocrosslinked nanofibrous scaffolds entailed good cellular compatibility, and could be used as potential wound dressing.

A novel flame retardant POBDBI was generated by the reaction of p-dibenzaldehyde, 5-amino-2-benzimidazolinone and 9,10-dihydro-9-oxa-10-phosphaphenanthrene-10-oxide (DOPO), and employed to epoxy resin. The structure of POBDBI was measured by FT-IR and NMR tests. Then flame-retardant EP was fabricated by using POBDBI as a flame-retardant. The thermal stability, flame-retardant performance and fire behavior were investigated by a serious of comprehensive instruments. Combustion tests show the flame-retardant performance of composite materials has been significantly improved. For example, the EP/POBDBI-1.0 with the phosphorus content of 1.0% accorded a V-0 rating and its limiting oxygen index (LOI) value increased to 36.5%. Besides, total smoke production (TSP), peak heat release rate (PHRR) and total heat release (THR) of EP/POBDBI-1.0 dropped significantly, and the corresponding values were decreased by 48.4%, 48.9% and 8.7%, respectively. At the same time, the composition, morphology of chars and gaseous products of POBDBI were studied by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), FT-IR, scanning electron microscope (SEM) and Py-GC/MS. These results presented that POBDBI could not only exerted free radical capture effect, but also enhanced the density of char residue.

In this work, a fully biodegradable poly(butylene succinate) (PBS) biocomposite was fabricated from ultrafine PBS fiber and waste paper (WP) using a paper-manufacturing and compression molding method. A PBS biocomposite containing 60 wt% WP showed a tensile strength, elongation at break, flexural strength, flexural modulus, interlaminar shear strength (ILSS), and impact strength of 78.1 MPa, 11.1%, 92.0 MPa, 7.5 GPa, 2.9 MPa, and 36.9 kJ/m2, respectively, which were superior to those of previously-reported PBS biocomposites. The damage mechanics reveals that tremendous deformation of plant fibers (PF) from WP and their riveting improved the mechanical properties of WP/PBS biocomposites. The weight loss ratio of WP/PBS-60 wt% biocomposite during biodegradation reached 95.1 wt% after immersion in an enzyme solution for 35 d. This fabrication approach provides a novel and facile strategy to develop high-performance, low-cost, and fully biodegradable PBS biocomposites.

Functionalized liquid-like graphene@SiO 2 hybrids are fabricated by using the graphene@SiO 2 as core and nonionic copolymer as shell in aqueous solution at room temperature. The hybrid materials can flow above 45 °C and have a particular thermal invertibility. The morphology, chemical composition, dispersibility and stability, as well as rheological behavior are systematically characterized by various methods. It is shown that well-dispersed SiO 2 nanoparticles are tightly anchored on the surface of graphene sheet via hydrogen bonding interaction under the synergetic effect of 3-(trimethoxysilyl)-1-propanethiol and copolymer to prevent the aggregation of graphene sheet. What is more, the hybrid materials keep remarkably stability and dispersibility in organic solvents and aqueous solution. More importantly, rheological tests indicate that viscoelastic behavior of graphene@SiO 2 hybrids is effectively regulated through varying the amount of surface nonionic copolymer and silane coupling agent, respectively. In addition, the liquid-like graphene@SiO 2 hybrids as a novel of hybrid coating make the substrates transfer from hydrophobicity to hydrophilicity. More interestingly, the damaged coating can be self-healed under immersing water or heating conditions, respectively. This simple and environment friendly approach will benefit for fabricating large scale graphene based hybrid materials in application of functional coating and rheological additives.

Herein, we used intense shear to construct caterpillar-like continuous hierarchical fibers (CLCHF). This architecture was then modified with mussel inspired poly(dopamine) (PDA) and γ-methacryloxypropyl trimethoxy silane (KH570) in a one-step method. Finally, employing (PDA + KH570)@CLCHF and compounded with poly(butylene succinate) (PBS) ultrafine fiber, (PDA + KH570)@CLCHF/PBS biocomposite was manufactured by combining intense shear and thermal-compression method. In virtue of intense shear, CLCHF can be effectively produced with nanoscale fibrils from 2 nm to 28 nm and (PDA + KH570)@CLCHF and PBS ultrafine fibers displayed favorable homogenization in aqueous solution. More importantly, the interspace between (PDA + KH570)@CLCHF and PBS ultrafine fibers could be optimized to facilitate infiltration at high filler content in polymers. The results also showed that the PBS biocomposite with 30 wt% (PDA + KH570)@CLCHF displayed optimal mechanical performance. Its tensile strength, elastic modulus, flexural strength, flexural modulus and impact strength reached to 120.2 MPa, 6.4 GPa, 110.1 MPa, 4.0 GPa and 23.5 kJ/m2, respectively. It is noticeble that the tensile properties were superior to some previously reported PBS biocompoistes due to the ability of CLCHF to effectively hinder the aggregation of numerous microcracks and slow crack tip propagation. The (PDA + KH570)@CLCHF/PBS biocomposites reported here can be used as desirable substitutes for nondegradable composites due to its high value added and favorable mechanical performance, and may broaden the application prospect of PBS biocomposite.

As an indispensable component, separator is close related to electrochemical performance and safety of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). However, the current widely applied polyolefin microporous separator impedes the development of high power LIBs due to poorer electrolyte wettability and inferior thermal stability. Herein, heat-resistant polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) fibers and cellulose fibers (CFs) are adopted to fabricate a novel composite separator (CFs/PPS) via a facile papermaking process. The as-prepared CFs/PPS separator exhibits higher porosity, improved electrolyte uptake and superior wettability. These boost its ionic conductivity and decrease interfacial resistance between CFs/PPS separator and electrode, which further endow battery with good rate capability. Moreover, in comparison to commercial polypropylene separator, CFs/PPS separator gives superior thermal stability, satisfactory mechanical strength, broader electrochemical window and more stable cycle performance. Accordingly, CFs/PPS composite separator is very promising for application in high power LIBs.

Cleaning up spilled crude oil and recycling oily wastewater are global challenge. For the first time, we develop a simple approach to fabricate solar-driven superhydrophobic/oleophilic polybenzoxazine/reduced graphene oxide wrapped-cellulose sponge (PBZRGOS) for highly efficiency oil/water separation and rapidly crude oil cleaning up from water. Polybenzoxazine (PBZ) is introduced into the cellulose sponge as a binder to provide low surface energy. Reduced graphene oxide (RGO) is anchored tightly on the sponge skeleton with the aid of PBZ for fabricating a thermal conductive path. The resultant PBZRGOS with 5% content of RGO (PBZRGOS5) exhibited robust mechanical stability after 100th compression process and maintained ultrahigh oil/water fluxes (up to 107428 Lm-2 h−1 bar−1) under 0.10 bar as well as high oil/water separation efficiency (99.1%) after 10 cycles, which is superior to other reported modified sponges. Moreover, the light-heat conversion capacity of PBZRGOS driven by solar energy obviously reduce the viscosity of crude oil, speeding up crude oil-diffusion coefficient, and thus achieve the saturated adsorption capacity up to 61.1 g/g with one sun, which is 15.7 times higher than that of the PBZRGOS without sunlight. Therefore, it is expected that this self-heating and superhydrophobic cellulose sponge can be utilized as a competitive functional sponge for cleaning up spilled crude-oil in the large area water body.

BiCl3, because of its promoting the formation of β crystal of PVDF and enhancing the conductivity, has drawn increasing attention in the fields of PVDF piezoelectric applications. The high β-phase concentration was achieved from the nanofiber film of PVDF doped with BiCl3, which enhance the piezoelectric power output of the fiber films. Under vertical vibration, the output piezoelectric voltage of BiCl3/PVDF nanofiber film-based piezoelectric nanogenerator with an optimized ratio of 2 wt% is up to 1.1 V, which is 4.76 times higher than that of pure PVDF fiber piezoelectric nanogenerator. The maximum peak current and power surface density are 2 μA and 0.2 μW cm−2, respectively. The alternating output signals generated from the BiCl3/PVDF fiber film can be used to charge a capacitor through a bridge rectifier and then light up a red LED. The test method had great influence on the piezoelectric outputs of the piezoelectric device. When a piezoelectric device is impacted by a falling ball, it can produce a voltage output of 38 V. This study shows that the BiCl3/PVDF nanofiber film based piezoelectric nanogenerator is a promising mechanical energy harvesters for portable electronic and wearable devices.

Poly (phenylene sulfide) ultrafine fiber is one kind of high-performance fiber with high specific surface area, corrosion resistance, chemical and thermal stability, which can be widely applied in various domains. However, there are few reports about the review of PPS ultrafine fiber. To meet this demand, the paper provides an overall investigation about the fabrication process of PPS ultrafine fiber including sea-island melt spinning, melt electrospinning and melt-blown spinning as well as the application of PPS ultrafine fiber based materials like high temperature filter, lithium ion battery separator, high strength and high modulus composites, oil/water separation membrane, catalytic, adsorption, degradation membrane and so on.

In this study, a new composite separator was fabricated by constructing crosslinked polymer electrolyte networks on polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) nonwoven substrate to enhance mechanical behavior and cell performance. According to chemical reactions of C–F bonds with amine groups, crosslinked polymer electrolyte networks were firstly formed between polymer poly(vinylidene fluoride-hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF-HFP) and hyperbranched polyethylenimine (PEI). The composite separator was given systematic investigations ranging from basic physical properties, electrochemical behavior and cell performance. It was found that the designed membrane exhibited higher electrolyte uptake, superior wetting behavior, improved ionic conductivity and interfacial compatibility, which finally weakened ohmic polarization phenomenon in device, and gave rise to the enhancement of discharge capacities at various C-rates as well as the strengthen of cyclic stability. Moreover, the incorporation of crosslinked networks in this system was confirmed to boost mechanical property prominently by tensile test. At the same time, this composite separator was observed to display remarkable heat resistance even after treated at 200 °C and broaden the electrochemical window considerably. Accordingly, this designed separator can meet the safety and performance requirements in the development of high power lithium ion battery.

A series of novel addition cured polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) composites with a given weight amount of nano-silica sol were prepared using MQ silicone resin as reinforcing agent by hydrosilylation for the first time. Influences of the used amount of MQ silicone resin on morphology, thermal stability, mechanical and optical properties of these novel PDMS composites were mainly studied. It was found that thermal stabilities and transparencies of the novel PDMS composites with a given amount of nano-silica sol decreased with an increment in weight fraction of MQ silicone resin, as compared with that of PDMS composites without MQ silicone resin (SMQ-0), which were likely ascribed to an increasing amount of remained silanols and the increasing size of aggregated particles in PDMS composites, respectively. However, mechanical properties of the novel PDMS composites with a given weight of nano-silica sol were improved significantly with amount of MQ silicone resin increasing, especially their elongations at break, which were up to 10 times. This was a great breakthrough for PDMS composites. The prominent improvements in mechanical properties were probably attributed to strong interaction of PDMS chains and uniformly dispersed particles resulted from crosslink of MQ silicone resin and nano-silca sol. This strategy for preparing novel addition curing PDMS composites provides a guide method to develop high elastic PDMS composites with desirable properties in industry applications.

A series of novel polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) composites were prepared using polyvinylsilsesquioxanes (PVS) as reinforcing agent by hydrolytic condensation in the presence of organotin catalyst for the first time. The cross-linked network, morphology, thermal behavior and mechanical properties of these novel PDMS composites were examined by attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy (ATR-IR), scanning electron microscope (SEM), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and universal tensile testing machine, respectively. Experimental results showed that both thermal and mechanical properties of the PDMS composites were improved greatly by adding PVS. The prominent improvements in thermal and mechanical properties were likely attributed to the reinforcing interaction of PDMS chains and formed particles resulted from PVS self-crosslink. Meanwhile, we also found that with the increment in loading PVS, the resistance to thermal degradation of the PDMS composites in nitrogen atmosphere was enhanced obviously, but their resistance to thermal oxidation in air was not improved apparently. The unobvious improvement in resistance to thermal oxidation of the novel composites was likely due to the catalysis of oxygen.

Separator is a vital component in lithium ion battery (LIB) and its property is directly related to cell performance and safety. However, the current widely used polyolefin separator suffers from lower heat resistant and inferior electrolyte wettability. Therefore, more attention has been attracted in the development of high performance separator. In this study, aramid nanofibers (ANFs), poly(p-phenylene terephthalamide), and heat-resistant polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) nonwoven were used to fabricate LIB composite separator by a facile papermaking process, which was abbreviated as ANFs/PPS. It was found that the introduced polar aramid nanofibers in this composite separator significantly regulated the porosity and improved electrolyte wettability, thus being helpful for lithium ion transfer between electrodes, increasing the ionic conductivity and exhibiting better interfacial compatible. These behaviors finally endowed battery with superior rate capability and excellent cycling performance. Moreover, the incorporation of aramid nanofibers in PPS membrane was confirmed to own higher Young's modulus to supply enough anti-deformation ability. In addition, we found the composite separator displayed outstanding thermal stability, flame retardant ability and broader electrochemical window, which would guarantee higher safety during battery operation. Accordingly, ANFs/PPS composite separator will provide a promising potential for application in high power LIB.

In this work, the high strength and rigidity composites composed of ultra-high content of glass fiber fabrics (GFF) and polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) nonwovens were successfully fabricated by a facile thermo-compression lamination method. The mechanical property, wettability, crystalline behavior, rheological behavior and dynamic mechanical properties were systematically characterized. These results show that the optimum formula of 80 wt% GFF content (∼70 vol%) can achieve the best mechanical properties of the composite with excellent wettability among PPS and glass fibers. The tensile strength, fracture elongation, elastic modulus, flexural strength, flexural modulus, ILSS and un-notched impact strength can reach to 850.6 MPa, 10.5%, 910.5 MPa, 78.5 GPa, 67.4 MPa and 215.2 kJ/m2, respectively, which are elevated by 108.8%, 38.2%, 52.8%, 82.6%, 230.4% and 136.5% in comparation to those of GFF/PPS composites with 60 wt% GFFs. The increasing interfacial layers and riveting effect among GFFs effectively prevent the crack propagation, which are the main reasons for the enhancing mechanical properties of PPS composites with ultra-high content GFF. It is established that the GFF/PPS composite fabricated in this work has the characteristic of the highest mechanical performance and the highest content of GFFs in comparison with the reported PPS-based composites. This GFF/PPS composite is an ideal substitute for traditional metal and GF/epoxy composites.

Shell-crosslinked core–shell nanoparticles (SCCSN) of 63–104 nm in diameter and containing 79.1 wt% crosslinked polystyrene (PS) shell of 16.5–37.0 nm in thickness were prepared by miniemulsion polymerization of styrene in the presence of silane modified nanosilica. The PS shell was crosslinked using divinyl benzene in order to anchor the shell on the nanoparticle surface, to segregate the silica core from the matrix and to avoid entanglement between the shell PS and the matrix macromolecules in SCCSN filled PS composites. Steady and dynamic rheologies of SCCSN filled PS were compared with bare silica filled PS. The SCCSN filled PS composites exhibited exceedingly good rheological stability than silica filled ones during annealing. Both bare silica and SCCSN introduced a non-terminal dynamic rheology while they did not introduce additional mechanism responsible for origination of nonlinear steady flow except for macromolecular disentanglement of the PS matrix. The reinforcement of SCCSN to PS was related to the silica core even though the crosslinked shell could effectively eliminate filler aggregation as the case of silica filled PS.