Evaluation of nano-filler dispersion quality in polymeric films with binary feature characteristics and fractal analysis

Abstract

This study investigates the use of binary features and fractal dimension analysis to evaluate the dispersion quality of nanofillers in thin polymeric films by using light microscopy images. For this purpose, polymeric films were cast with the inclusion of various montmorillonite (MMT) nanofiller amounts. Then the light microscopy images were captured from the polymeric films then preprocessed for the evaluation. Thresholding process was applied to the obtained images for each nanofiller percentage level. The obtained binary level images were used in the feature extraction process with binary statistics and fractal dimension. Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was used to evaluate the flame resist behaviour of polymeric films based on the dispersion quality of nanofillers. The samples with various nanofiller contents were tested using the image processing method and the results were all compared with the TGA results. The results obtained by the feature extraction process and TGA, about the dispersion quality of nanofillers, were all in good agreement.