Preparation and Characteristics of Polyamide Containing Superfine Particles

Polyamide (PA) sheets with superfine particles containing polymethylphenylsiloxane as the core substance (nanocapsular polymer filler: diameter about 250 nm) were prepared and the effects of the polymer filler on the properties of PA were investigated to improve the transparency of PA. The tensile strength of PA sheet was improved by about 20%. Moreover, the clarity of the sheet was found to increase by about 10 times due to the diminished visible light scattering caused by the formation of tiny PA crystals uniformly dispersed in the polymer. On the other hand, the addition of non-encapsulated polymer filler yielded opaque sheets because of grown PA crystals. These findings indicated the importance of the addition of uniform dispersion of nano-sized core substance particles to the polymer. In particular, the addition of liposomes containing polymethylphenylsiloxane (nanocapsular polymer filler) was found to be important to make PA sheet transparent and improve its tensile strength.