Chain Conformations and Bound-Layer Correlations in Polymer Nanocomposites Sudeepto Sen, * Yuping Xie, and Sanat K. Kumar * ,† Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180, USA Hoichang Yang Rensselaer Nanotechnology Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180, USA Amitabh Bansal GE Global Research Center, Niskayuna, New York 12309, USA Derek L. Ho Polymer Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899, USA Lisa Hall, Justin B. Hooper, and Kenneth S. Schweizer Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA (Received 17 May 2006; published 22 March 2007) Small angle neutron scattering studies on polystyrene loaded with spherical silica nanoparticles under contrast-matched conditions unequivocally show that chain conformations follow unperturbed Gaussian statistics independent of chain molecular weight and filler composition. Liquid state theory calculations are consistent with this conclusion and also predict filler-induced modification of interchain polymer correlations which have a distinctive scattering signature that is in nearly quantitative agreement with our observations. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.128302 PACS numbers: 82.35.Np, 61.46.w The topic of nanocomposites is of great interest, since the addition of nanoparticles to polymers can yield mate- rials with significantly improved properties [1– 6]. Here we focus on two simple, but unresolved, questions which underpin our understanding in this area: (i) What is the effect of filler on chain conformation? (ii) How is inter- chain packing perturbed by filler-monomer attractions? While most simulations show that chain conformations are hardly affected by the addition of particles [7], a few [8] find significant chain deformation. While this last class of simulations does not appear to be relevant to filled melts [9], they agree with the results of some experiments on corresponding systems [10]. Other experiments [11], which used cross-linked melts, suggest that chain confor- mation is unaffected by particles. However, their relevance to the more general case of uncross-linked polymers is unclear. The current situation on this question is thus controversial. We performed small angle neutron scatter- ing (SANS) on nanocomposites with model uncross-linked polymers to unequivocally resolve this issue. Polymer reference interaction site model (PRISM) calculations [12] are used to interpret these data and reveal the under- lying physics. Our results show that polymers are unper- turbed Gaussian coils in the presence of filler. We thus stress that polymers in nanocomposites and thin films behave analogously [13], a result that is bolstered by ex- periments on thin films [14,15]. Three sets of protonated and deuterated polystyrenes (hPS and dPS, respectively), of roughly equal molecular weight and narrow polydispersities, and silica particles (Nissan, diameter 14  4 nm) were used as obtained (Table I). We consider blends with 66 wt % hPS and 34 wt % dPS, which almost contrast match the silica [16]. This implies that the silica has a mean scattering length density of 3:0  10 6  A 2 corresponding to a den- sity of 1:90 g=cm 3 , which is less than the bulk value of 2:2g=cm 3 [17]. This low density is consistent with Ref. [11], which reported that the apparent density of fumed silica was only 60% of the bulk. This is probably because, both in our experiments and in Ref. [11], the particles are imperfectly mixed with the polymers, with the particles being surrounded by ‘‘voids’’ especially at large filler content [Fig. 1(a)]. While these density numbers are low, we shall show that they do not affect our primary conclusions on chain conformations. Nanocomposites with 0, 2.9, 6.0, and 9.1 vol% silica were prepared for each molecular weight. We also prepared 15.9 and 27.4 vol% TABLE I. Molecular weights (M w ) and polydispersities (PDI) for polystyrenes used in this work. Light scattering data provided by Polymer Laboratories. dPS hPS M w (kg=mol) PDI M w (kg=mol) PDI 90 1.02 98 1.03 250 1.03 243 1.02 620 1.05 557.5 1.03 PRL 98, 128302 (2007) PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS week ending 23 MARCH 2007 0031-9007= 07=98(12)=128302(4) 128302-1  2007 The American Physical Society