MacGyvered Multiproperty Materials Using Nanocarbon and Jam: A Spectroscopic, Electromagnetic and Rheological Investigation

As part of a biopolymer matrix, pectin was investigated to obtain an engineered jam, due to its biodegradability. Only a few examples of pectin-based nanocomposites are present in the literature, and even fewer such bionanocomposites utilize nanocarbon as a filler—mostly for use in food packaging. In the present paper, ecofriendly nanocomposites made from household reagents and displaying multiple properties are presented. In particular, the electrical behavior and viscoelastic properties of a commercial jam were modulated by loading the jam with carbon nanotubes and graphene nanoplates. A new nanocomposite class based on commercial jam was studied, estimating the percolation threshold for each filler. The electrical characterization and the rheological measurements suggest that the behavior above the percolation threshold is influenced by the different morphology—i.e., one-dimensional or two-dimensional—of the fillers. These outcomes encourage further studies on the use of household materials in producing advanced and innovative materials, in order to reduce the environmental impact of new technologies, without giving up advanced devices endowed with different physical properties.

Bending, buckling and Vibrations Analysis of the graphene nanoplate using the modified couple stress theory

In this paper using the modified couple stress theory, to study the bending, buckling and vibration characteristics of the rectangular Mindlin's nanoplates with graphene material was investigated. With the aim of considering the effects of small scales, the modified couple stress theory, which has only one parameter of length scale and also was presented by Yang in 2002, was used. In the modified couple stress theory; the strain energy density is a function of the components of the strain tensor, curvature tensor, stress tensor and the symmetric part of the couple stress tensor. After obtaining the strain energy, external work, and buckling equation and placing them in the Hamilton's equation, the basic and auxiliary equations of the nanoplates were obtained. Then, by applying boundary and force conditions in the governing equations, the bending, buckling and vibration of the rectangular graphene nanoplates with thickness h and simply-supported conditions were explored. Also, the solution method was the Navier's solution.