A comparative study of polyethylene oxide/nanoclay composite preparation via supercritical carbon dioxide and melt processing

The efficacy of supercritical carbon dioxide (ScCO2) treatment compared with conventional melt processing methods in preparing nanoclay composites from poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) of varying molecular weight (400-10,000) and a fluorinated ethoxide (EO) was studied. At low polymer loadings (~ 20 wt% PEO), the results obtained using either method were broadly consistent for each molecular weight of PEO studied, although ScCO2 processing yielded more homogenous samples. The ScCO2 technique was found to be most effective when used with PEO of higher molecular weight (10,000) or fluorinated EO, which is otherwise difficult to process using conventional techniques.