The improved thermal and mechanical properties of polyurea nanocomposites with SiC

Abstract Polyurea as one kind of polymer is widely used in the field of protective under blast and impact loading. Polyurea matrix with nanofillers has superior mechanical properties than the pure polyurea. In this work, in order to develop polyurea with thermal stability and high mechanical properties, using Silicon carbide (SiC) as the nanofillers, polyurea nanocomposites with different content of SiC nanoparticles were prepared via in-situ polymerization method. The morphology and structure of SiC/polyurea nanocomposites were characterized by using SEM, XRD and FTIR. From the structure studies, the nanofillers of SiC had not altered the basic structure of polyurea. Thermal stability and mechanical properties were also studied by TGA and tensile testing machine, respectively. The results indicated that the incorporation of SiC nanoparticles (1.5 wt%) into polyurea could obviously improve thermal properties and mechanical properties in comparation with the pure polyurea. The enhancement of performance is relative to SiC nanoparticles reinforced polyurea matrix and high temperature properties of SiC. At higher content of SiC, the mechanical properties of SiC/polyurea nanocomposites tend to decrease. It can be inferred from the results that SiC/polyurea nanocomposites have the potential for using in protective structures.