44. Viscoelastic Properties of Clay‐Containing Nanocomposites ofThermotropic Liquid‐Crystal Polymer.

The nanocomposites of liquid-crystal polymer (LCP) with two different weight per cents of claywere preparedviathe melt extrusion method. To investigate the properties of the materials inthe linear and non-linear viscoelastic regions, both oscillatory and rotational tests were carriedout. The results showed that the nanocompositewith higher clay content exhibited an almostdefectless partially cross-linked structure com-pared to the nanocomposite with lower claycontent or the pure LCP. The linear stress relax-ation measurements revealed that the pure LCPrelaxed faster than nanocomposites after impo-sition of a constant strain for a specific time.During the step rate relaxation test, high shearrate modified the defects in the pure LCP veryquickly and probably attained almost an equi-librium  position  while  the  nanocompositesamples showed strong shear thinning beha-viour.Macromol. Chem. Phys.2009,210,161–171ß2009 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, WeinheimDOI: 10.1002/macp.200800479161