Magnetic, mechanical and flame retardant properties study of polystyrene/ cobalt ferrite nanocomposites

In this study the cobalt ferrite nanoparticles synthesized via a sol-gel green auto-combustion method using kiwi fruit extract. Then cobalt ferrite was added to polystyrene PS polymer. The X-ray diffraction pattern of CoFe2O4 nanoparticles shown pure cubic phase and the crystallite size was calculated by Debye -Scherrer’s formula about 45 nm. The SEM images of cobalt ferrite illustrated cubic shape. The FESEM image of polystyrene/ cobalt ferrite nanocomposites had been shown nanoparticles being inside polymer matrix. X-ray mapping provides presence all elements distributed homogeneously in polymer. The FT-IR spectrum of the nanocomposites exhibits all cobalt ferrite and polystyrene atomic bond peaks. Hysteresis loops of cobalt ferrite nanoparticles and magnetic/polymer nanocomposites shown cobalt ferrite nanoparticles have more saturated magnetization and less coercivity than nanocomposites. The cobalt ferrite effect on the flame retardancy polystyrene was investigated applying UL-94 test. The pure polystyrene had V-0 classification and polystyrene/ cobalt ferrite nanocomposites have HB category. The mechanical properties of samples pure polystyrene and polystyrene/ cobalt ferrite nanocomposites have been studied by tensile testing machine.The stress-strain curves for these two samples shown addition nanoparticles to polymer increase the tensile strength and decrease the elongation of sample.