Control of the Morphology of the Layered-Silicate Epoxy Nanocomposite Chenggang Chen 1,2 and Tia Benson Tolle 2 1 University of Dayton Research Institute, 300 College Park, Dayton, OH 45469-0168, USA 2 Air Force Research Laboratory, Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, OH 45433, USA ABSTRACT Polymer layered-silicate nanocomposites have attracted great attention due to their unique nanostructure and properties. The property of the nanocomposite is determined by the morphology of the nanocomposite. The typical morphologies of the nanocomposite are the intercalated and exfoliated nanostructures. In this study, the layered-silicate epoxy nanocomposite with different morphology can be controlled and achieved. The different morphology could include the intercalated nanostructure with the 15 Å increase of the interplanar spacing, the intercalated one with ~150 Å increase of the gallery and fully exfoliated nanostructure. INTRODUCTION Polymer-clay nanocomposites have attracted great interest in academia and industry recently [1-3]. In the traditional polymer-clay composite materials, the polymer is immiscible with polymer, and there is no polymer penetrating inside the gallery between the nanoclay sheets. In the polymer clay nanocomposite, the morphology is different. The polymer should be compatible with the clay, and the polymer can penetrate inside the gallery between the clay nanosheets. With the penetration of the polymer inside the gallery, the interplanar spacing of the gallery naturally will be increased. If the ordered structure of nanoclay tactoids is still preserved, this morphology of the nanocomposite is catalogued as intercalated nanocomposite. In another case, if the interaction between the adjacent nanoclay sheets is not strong enough to keep the ordered structure of the nanoclay tactoids and the nanoclay sheets are continuously and randomly distributed in the whole polymer matrix, this morphology is catalogued as exfoliated nanocomposite. Although it is well known that the morphology of the nanocomposite determines properties of the nanocomposite [1-3], the control of the morphology of the nanocomposite is very challenging. In this paper, we present a summary of the recent and latest progress in our laboratory on the control of the morphology of the epoxy nanocomposite from the intercalated nanostructure with the 15 Å increase of the interplanar spacing of the gallery, the intercalated nanostructure with very large increase of the interplanar spacing of the gallery (100 to 200 Å) and fully exfoliated nanostructure [4-6]. Mater. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc. Vol. 847 © 2005 Materials Research Society EE9.33.1