Morphology, Properties and Application of Iron Oxide/Polycaprolactone Nanocomposites

Polycaprolactone (PCL) and Fe2O3/PCL nanocomposites sheets/films were prepared by solution casting method. The morphological study illustrated that Fe2O3 nanoparticles were dispersed and embedded well within the PCL matrix. The size of Fe2O3 nanoparticles were below 250 nm. The thermal stability of Fe2O3/PCL nanocomposites was lower than neat PCL, which might be due to Fe2O3 (act as catalyst during the thermal degradation of PCL). The differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analyses show that the crystallization temperature of the nanocomposites was slightly enhanced as compared to neat PCL. The polarized optical microscopy (POM) analyses showed that the size of Fe2O3/PCL nanocomposites spherulites were smaller than neat PCL. The photodegradation study presented that the nanocomposites photodegraded higher quantity of rhodamine B dye as compared to neat PCL. The neat PCL degraded about 24 and 72% while Fe2O3 (6 wt%)/PCL nanocomposites degraded about 72 and 98% of dye within 2 and 10 h, respectively.