Preparation of Sheet-like Polymer-Encapsulated Composite Particles by Seeded Polymerization from Sub-micrometer Sheets

Seeded polymerization has been widely used to fabricate polymer-encapsulated inorganic particles (IPs). The most frequently used seeds are spherical, whereas nonspherical particles are not well documented. Recently, sheet-like IPs have attracted much attention in the context of polymer composites. This article is therefore dedicated to understanding seeded polymerization from submicron sheets and focuses on the control of the overall morphology of the composite particles obtained. However, it was found that the composite particles only maintained the sheet-like morphology of the seeds at a low polymer content, whereas they became hamburger-like at a high polymer content owing to minimization of the interfacial energy. Interestingly, when cross-linked, the sheet-like morphology could be well preserved, even at a rather high polymer content. With the encapsulating polymer layer, the obtained sheet-like composite particles showed improved compatibility with the polymer matrix and could be well dispersed in polymer matrix when simply blended.