**Author details**

Rocío del A. Cardona and Jorge J. Santiago-Avilés\*

\*Address all correspondence to: santiago@seas.upenn.edu

Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

## **References**


[8] Mauritz, K. A., Moore, R. B. State of Understanding of Nafion. Chemical Reviews 2004; 104 (10) 4535–4585.

[22] Rosario-Canales, M., Deria, P., Gopu, P., Therien, M., Santiago-Aviles,J.J. Composite Electronic Materials for Super-capacitor Applications, ECS Transactions. 2009; 23(1),

Materials and Processes for Ion Permeable Separating Membranes by Electro-Spinning

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/57094

163

[23] Partial content of this work was presented by the author (R. delA Cardona) at 2nd International Conference on Electrospinning, Jeju, S. Korea, 2012, Poly-l-Lactic Acid Membranes Produced by Electrospinning for Applications in Electrical Double Layer

3-10.

Capacitors.


[22] Rosario-Canales, M., Deria, P., Gopu, P., Therien, M., Santiago-Aviles,J.J. Composite Electronic Materials for Super-capacitor Applications, ECS Transactions. 2009; 23(1), 3-10.

[8] Mauritz, K. A., Moore, R. B. State of Understanding of Nafion. Chemical Reviews

[9] Burger, C., Hsiao, B.S., Chu, B. Nano-fibrous Materials and Their Applications. An‐

[10] Mehta, R., Kumar, V., Bhunia, H., Upadhyay, S.N. Synthesis of Poly(Lactic Acid): A

[11] Gupta, B., Revagade, N., Hilborn, J. Poly(lactic acid) fiber: An overview. Progress in

[12] Södergård, A., Stolt, M. Properties of lactic acid based polymers and their correlation

[13] Harris, A. M., Lee, E.C. Injection molded Polylactide(PLA) composites for automo‐ tive applications. Material Research and Advanced Engineering, Ford Company. http://speautomotive.com/SPEA\_CD/SPEA2006/PDF/c/c1.pdf (Accessed August 2

[14] Rosario-Canales, M., Derias, P., Therien, M.J., Santiago-Aviles, J.J., Composite Elec‐ tronic Materials Based on Poly(3,4-propylenedioxythiophene) and Highly Charged Poly(aryleneethynylene)-Wrapped Carbon Nanotubes for Supercapacitors, ACS Ap‐

[15] Li, D., Xia, Y. Electrospinning of Nanofibers: Reinventing the Wheel?. Advanced Ma‐

[16] Bal, S., Samal, S.S. Carbon nanotube reinforced polymer composite-A state of the art.

[17] Fung, A.W.P., Rao, A.M., Kuriyama, K., Dresselhaus, G., Endo, M., Shindo, N. Ram‐ an scattering and electrical conductivity of highly disordered activated carbon fibers.

[18] Wang, Y., Ramos, I., Santiago-Aviles, J.J. Nanofibers "Diversity of Nano-fibers from Electro-spinning: from Graphitic Carbons to Ternary Oxides". In: INTECH publish‐

[19] Szegö, G. On Membranes and Plates. Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Science

[20] Herrmann, A.M. Instrumentation for multiaxial mechanical testing of inhomogene‐ ous elastic membranes. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/35671 (accessed August 2 2012).

[21] Pai, C-L., Boyce, M.C., Rutledge, G.C. On the importance of fiber curvature to the ele‐ astic moduli of electrospun nonwoven fiber meshes. Polymer. 2011; 52, 6126-6133.

with composition. Progress in Polymer Science. 2002; 27 (6), 1123–1163.

nual Reviews of Material Research. 2006; 36, 333–368.

plied Materials and Interfaces. 2012; 4 (1), 102–109.

Bulletin of Material Science. 2007; 30(4), 379-386.

Journal of Material Research. 1993; 8 (3), 489-500.

of the United States of America. 1950; 36(3), 210–216.

Review. Journal of Macromolecular Science. 2005; 45, 325-349.

2004; 104 (10) 4535–4585.

2012).

162 Advances in Nanofibers

Polymer Science. 2007; 32, 455-482.

terials. 2004; 16, 1151-1170.

ers, Croatia; 2010. P89-120.

[23] Partial content of this work was presented by the author (R. delA Cardona) at 2nd International Conference on Electrospinning, Jeju, S. Korea, 2012, Poly-l-Lactic Acid Membranes Produced by Electrospinning for Applications in Electrical Double Layer Capacitors.

**Chapter 7**

**Nanofibers Reinforced Polymer Composite**

In general, nanocomposites are defined as the combination of multiphase materials in which at least one of the constituents has one dimension in the nanometer range [1]– [3]. The nanoscale constituent could be one dimensional likenanofibres and nanowires, two-dimensional like nanoclay or three-dimensional like spherical particles in nanoscale range. Nanofibers rein‐ forced polymermultifunctionalitycan be attributed to the combination of the constituent materials. Desired properties of nanofibers reinforced polymercan be obtained by the selection of the constituent materials and the size of the nanofibress based on the required application. Current research has focused in the areas of manufacturing techniques and material combi‐

Nanofibers reinforced polymer are progressing with the use of a combination of atomic scale characterization and detailed modeling. In the early 1990s, Toyota Central Research Labora‐ tories in Japan reported working on a Nylon-6 nanocomposite [6], in which a small amount of nano filler resulted in a considerable improvement of thermal and mechanical properties. The properties of nanofibers reinforced polymer materials depend on their morphology and interfacial characteristics as well as on the properties of their individual parents (nanofillers

Dramatic changes in physical properties will be the result of the transition from microparticles to nanoparticles. Nanoscale materials have a large surface area for a given volume [7]. A nanostructured material can have substantially different properties from a larger-dimensional material of the same composition because many important chemical and physical interactions are governed by surfaces and surface properties. In the case of nanoparticles and nanofibers, the surface area per unit volume is inversely proportional to the material's diameter. So, the smaller the diameter, the greater is the surface area per unit volume [7]. Figure 1 shows

> © 2013 Alubaidy et al.; licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

nation for the fabrication of the nanostructured reinforced polymers [4], [5].

A. Alubaidy, K. Venkatakrishnan and B. Tan

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

**Microstructures**

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/57101

**1. Introduction**

and polymer, in this case).
