No abstract

Carbon nanofibers and nanotubes are promising to revolutionise several fields in material science and are a major component of nanotechnology. Further market development will depend on material availability at reasonable prices. Nanotubes have a wide range of unexplored potential applications in various technological areas such as aerospace, energy, automobile, medicine, or chemical industry, in which they can be used as gas adsorbents, templates, actuators, composite reinforcements, catalyst supports, probes, chemical sensors, nanopipes, nano-reactors etc. In this paper, recent research on carbon nanotube composites are reviewed. The interfacial bonding properties, mechanical performance, electrical percolation of nanotube/polymer and ceramic are also reviewed.

Polypropylene (PP) and acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) blends with multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWNT) were prepared by melt mixing. PP/ABS blends without MWNT revealed coarse co continuous structures on varying the ABS content from 40 to 70 wt %. Bulk electrical conductivity of the blends showed lower percolation threshold (0.4-0.5 wt %) in the 45/55 co continuous blends whereas the percolation threshold was between 2 and 3 wt % in matrix-particle dispersed morphology of 80/20 blends. Interestingly, droplet size was observed to decrease with addition of MWNT above percolation threshold in 80/20 blends. Further, the bulk electrical conductivity was found to be dependent on the melt flow index of PP. The non-polar or weakly polar nature of blends constituents resulted in the temperature independent dielectric constant, dielectric loss, and DC electrical conductivity. Rheological analysis revealed the formation of 3D network-like structure in 80/20 PP/ABS blends at 3 wt % MWNT. An attempt was made to understand the relationship between rheology, morphology, and electrical conductivity of these blends.

No abstract