Three-Dimensional Structural Analysis of Nanocomposite Materials Containing Nanoparticulates

Polymer materials are ubiquitous in our daily life. They often consist of more than one species of polymers and, therefore, can be called multicomponent systems. Organic-inorganic composites are a class of polymer-based multicomponent materials that have attracted the considerable interest of researchers because they often exhibit unexpected properties synergistically derived from the constituents (Kawasumi et al., 1997; Maiti et al., 2002). Nanometer-sized particulate fillers, e.g., carbon black and silica nanoparticles, are known to form hybrids with organic polymers, which show a significant increase in their static and dynamic moduli (Busfield et al., 2000), strength (Tsunoda et al., 2000), and thermal and electrical conductivities (Yamaguchi et al., 2003; Busfield et al., 2003).