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Polymer nanofibers have attracted a lot of industrial interest in the past decade. In general, these fibers need to be thermally stable for many applications, such as in the aerospace industry. However, most of these polymer nanofibers suffer from low temperature degradation, limiting their use in many potential applications. Graphene, which is one sheet of graphite, has unique properties such as high conductivity, and high thermal stability. This exceptional material can be incorporated into the polymer nanofibers as nanofillers in order to enhance their thermal properties. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the effect of adding graphene nanofillers into the polymer fiber on the resulting fibers’ thermal properties. For that purpose, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), a non-conductive polymer and a different source of graphene, namely graphene foam, expendable graphite and graphite powder were used. The growth technique was the electrospinning technique which offers a variety of parameters that need to be optimized. For this includes, the amount of PVA in the water solvent, the flow rate, the applied voltage, the growth time, and the tip/collector distance. In summary, it has been optimized that the best conditions for growth of fibers will be as follows: PVA concentration will be fixed at 10 wt%, flow rate will be 3 ml/h, applied voltage will be 30 kV, growth time of 60 s and tip/collector distance will be fixed at 12 cm. The resulted PVA fibers from these conditions were smooth continuous and hollow with diameter ranging between 190-340 nm, while PVA/graphene nano-fibers are much thinner with diameter ranging between 132 - 235 nm when the same parameters were used with only graphene concentration varied. The fiber obtained with PVA showed a hollow structure which is desirable for incorporation of graphene nanofillers. The dispersion of the different source of graphene sheets in the starting PVA solution showed enhanced thermal stability compared to the PVA fibers alone. Furthermore, an increase in the thermal stability is observed with increasing concentration of graphene nanofillers. This work shows the promising use of graphene as nanofillers for PVA fibers. This can be expended to other non-conductive and conductive polymers in order to broaden the application of these fibers in the industries, where thermal stability is a prerequisite. / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Physics / unrestricted

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Polymer nanofibers used for the construction of triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) and piezoelectric nanogenerator (PENG) are new and promising technologies for energy recovery. Thanks to the generation of electrical energy based on mechanical movement (deformation), these fibers can find application in the field of self-powered electronic devices. In this work, three nanofibrous structures of materials were prepared by electrostatic spinning: pure polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), pure polyamide-6 (PA6) and their mixed combination PVDF / PA6. Non-destructive analyzes such as Raman spectroscopy, FTIR, XPS and electron microscopy were used to study the properties of nanofibers. Analyzes confirmed the positive effect of electrostatic spinning of polymers on the support of the formation of highly polar crystalline -phase in PVDF and , -phase in PA6. The structure arrangement of the nanofibrous material and their defects were observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Furthermore, the contact angle of the wettability of the liquid on the surface was measured for the materials, and the permittivity was measured to monitor the dielectric properties. The described results make the mixed material PVDF / PA6 very promising for further research in the field of nanogenerators and functional textiles.

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D. Tech. (Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Applied and Computer Sciences), Vaal University of Technology. / Nanoscience receives a lot of attention in the 21 century and is one of the most advancing technology in our days. It provides many new and advanced technological opportunities. This field involves many disciplines which include chemical, physical, and biological related fields. The advancement of nanoscience makes life to be better and bring about new inventions which can solve many problems in our day to day life. Although there are reservations about the use of these materials in other fields. Some researchers believe that these materials can be a problem to the environment and humanity at large. Therefore, more research needs to be done to fully understand these materials. Polymer science is another field that has been advancing every day. Many problems in our lives require material which have properties from nanomaterials and polymers. The combination of these technologies can leads to new materials which have many possibilities in solving most problems. Some researchers have taken advantage of these two powerful fields and merge them. There has been a lot of work done that involves combination of nanotechnology and polymer science. The current project is an initiative to manufacture nanofibers. These fibers are prepared using polymer solution mixed with metal oxide and metal selenide nanomaterials. The polymer solution is incorporated with nanoparticles and electrospunned to make nanofibers. The electrospinning afford the material prepared to be at nanoscale. The fact that the material formed is at nanoscale opens many possibilities to be used in various fields. The study is about fabrication of polymer nanofibers embedded with metal chalcogenide nanoparticles. The metal oxide and metal selenide nanoparticles were prepared using complexes. These complexes contain both the metal and the chalcogenide of interest. The complexes are prepared from oxygen-based (urea), and selenium-based (diphenyldiselenide) ligands. The urea complexes co-ordinates with metal using oxygen for iron, however in silver complexes both nitrogen and oxygen are used. These complexes allow easy control of reaction parameters, and thermal decomposes to form metal oxide, metal selenide, and metal. The complexes are very stable and decomposes at about 200 °C. These compounds are thermal decomposed to form metal chalcogenides, and metal nanoparticles. The complexes are characterized with FTIR, TGA, and elemental analysis. The metal chalcoginedes (copper oxide, iron oxide, silver oxide, copper selenide, iron selenide, and silver selenide) nanoparticles were prepared using thermal decomposition of a single source (complexes or metal salts). The prepared chalcogenides nanoparticles have good absorption and emission properties consistent with small sizes. These nanoparticles are composed of various phased and stoichiometry. Some metal chalcogenides have a mixture of stoichiometry and phase. The metal chalcogenides nanoparticles are dominated by spheres, and other shapes such as rods. These metal chalcogenides have a particles size in the range of 1-36 nm. The metal chalcogenides nanoparticles were tested against bacteria and fungi. These nanoparticles show highest activity in gram positive compared to gram negative bacteria. Metal oxide nanoparticles show the highest activity compared to metal selenide. All the metal chalcogenides show the highest against fungi. The nanoparticles are able to inhibit the fungi at lowest concentration. The nanoparticles are characterized with various instruments which includes UV-Vis, PL, XRD, and TEM. Nanofibers of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) incorporated with metal selenide and metal oxide nanoparticles were prepared by electrospinning. The nanofibers incorporated with metal chalcogenide are more thermal stable than PMMA nanofibers. Therefore, incorporation of metal chalcogenides nanoparticles leads to more thermal stability nanofibers. The PMMA are coordinated to the metal oxide and metal selenide through carbonyl oxygen atom. The PMMA incorporated with metal oxide and metal selenide leads to the formation of nanofibers with uneven surface with a diameter in the range of 30 to 200 nm. The prepared fibers are characterized using FTIR, TGA, SEM.