ABSTRACT
Introduction Nanoscale eects are responsible for the growing scientic interest in both nanomaterials and nanocomposites [1]. Often, nanoobjects display interesting physical phenomena such as surface plasmon resonance in metallic nanoparticles (NPs), ballistic transport in carbon nanotubes (CNTs), or uorescence emission in quantum dots (QDs), among others. Most of them are useful for a huge of potential applications covering from nanoelectronic to improved sensors devices [2]. Also, nanocomposites composed of well-dispersed nanoobjects into a polymer matrix lead to unexpected mechanical [3] and/or rheological properties [4]. A representative example is the large decrease (up to 80%) in melt viscosity upon nanoparticle addition rst observed in polystyrene-nanoparticle (PS-NP)/linear-polystyrene (PS) blends by Mackay et al. [5]. e underlying physics of this unexpected behavior is being currently explored [6] and should be rationalized in terms of scaling concepts at the nanoscale [7]. Blend miscibility (homogeneity) is a necessary condition to observe such a viscosity drop in all-polymer nanocomposites (i.e., polymer-nanoparticle/linear-polymer blends).
