A facile and green method for the production of novel and potentially biocompatible poly(amide-imide)/ZrO2–poly(vinyl alcohol) nanocomposites containing trimellitylimido-l-leucine linkages

Abstract

The present work describes the synthesis and properties of polymer composites based on poly(vinyl pyrrolidone) (PVP) as polymer shell and poly(amide-imide)(PAI)/ZnO nanocomposite (ZNC) as efficient filler. At first, the alanine amino acid containing dicarboxylic acid was grafted on the surface of ZnO NPs. Then, modified ZnO (12 wt%) was incorporated into the PAI matrix under ultrasonic irradiations. The obtained hybrid ZNC showed high thermal stability and the size of the NPs in the TEM image of ZNC was about 31 nm. Secondly, PVP NCs with different ZNC loadings such as 2, 4 and 6 wt% were prepared via ultrasonication. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observations showed that the ZnO NPs were uniformly and highly dispersed in the PVP matrix. The UV–vis results exposed that the high UV-shielding efficiency of the obtained composites. Thermal analysis represented that the onset decomposition temperatures of the obtained PVPNCs had remarkable increasing in compared to the neat PVP due to the presence of both ZnO NPs and PAI.