4. Results and discussion
4.1. Soxhlet extraction
Polymeric samples were extracted for their insoluble
content and these results are reported in Table 2. The plot
between the content of linseed oil and soluble content of
the nano-composite sample is shown in Fig.1. For the nanocomposite
samples at fixed clay contents (5%), the increase
in the oil content from 30 to 70% in the samples leads to
a decrease in insoluble content from 72 to 43% and an
increase in the soluble part from 28 to 57%. These results
indicate that with the increase of linseed oil content, the
cross-linking density of the polymeric samples decreases.
For the variation of filler from 0 to 10% at a fixed composition
of the polymer, the soluble portion decreases from 45 to 30% and the insoluble portion increases from 55 to 70%.
The variation in soluble content with increase in the filler
content is shown in Fig.1. The soluble content reduces from
the level for the pure polymer to a minimum at the 2.5%
filler level and then increases with further increase of filler
content up to 10% (from Fig. 1).