ENGINEERING THE MICROSTRUCTURE AND OPTICAL FEATURES OF SiC- MWCNTS NANOPARTICLES DOPED PVA-PAA FOR PROMISING INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS

The development of new materials with improved features requires the use of nanocomposite materials and polymer blends. Their special combination provides enhanced performance in a range of environmental, biomedical, and industrial applications. Using the traditional casting procedure, the polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) / poly acrylic acid (PAA) polymer blend doped with silicon carbide (SiC) / multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) nanocomposites was successfully created. Nanocomposites (NPs) were evenly distributed over the polymer mix matrix, and the polymer blend was well dispersed in the solution, according to the optical microscopy image. The films’ surface morphology of the polymer blend exhibits a homogeneous grain distribution, according to FE-SEM examination. The generated materials do not include any new functional groups, according to the FTIR analysis, indicating that just a physical interaction has taken place. It was observed from the study of optical properties that the increase in SiC/MWCNTs nanoparticles led to enhancement of all optical features, such as absorbance, refractive index, optical conductivity, real and imaginary parts of the dielectric constant, while transmittance and energy gaps were decreased. The energy gap decreased from 4.8 eV to 3.82 eV for the allowed transition, and from 4 eV to 3.02 eV for the forbidden transition. These results reveal that PVA/PAA doped SiC/MWCNTs films can be utilized in a variety of advanced applications.