Preparation and Characterization of Epoxy/Inorganic Anti‐electrostatic Nanocomposites Using Submicrometer Al(OH)3 and Colloid Al2O3

New organic‐inorganic hybrid materials and their anti‐electrostatic hybrid membranes are prepared via sol‐gel process. The polycondensation of epoxy oligomers and AEAPS/Al₂O₃ complexes which are organically surface modified submicrometer aluminum trihydroxide inorganic fillers with an active aminoterminal silane coupling agent, N‐(2‐aminoethyl)‐3‐aminopropyltrimethoxysilane (AEAPS), are performed. AEAPS enhances the interfacial interactions between the inorganic fillers and epoxy polymers. Meanwhile, this coupling agent maintains well dispersion of fillers in these composites. To improve the mechanical strength and thermal stability, pyromellitic dianhydride (PMDA) is used as curing agent. These hybrid films prepared from this method have excellent physical properties, such as UV‐shielding, high transmission in visible resign (> 85%), high hardness (7～8H) , high adhesive force (7～8) and low relative surface resistance (9.71 × 10¹¹～1.26 × 10¹⁰ Ω/cm²) with anti‐electrostatic characters. For thermal resistance, the best Td value of epoxy/PMDA/AEAPS/Al₂O₃ is 378.6 °C which is 85.4 °C higher than that of neat epoxy resin. Physical properties of these materials are almost the same as those of the nanocomposites prepared from expensive colloid Al₂O₃. Evidences from TEM micrograph show that the inorganic additives are dispersed evenly in organic matrix with nanometer scale.