Electrical and mechanical behaviors of carbon nanotube‐filled polymer blends

Abstract

Four carbon nanotube (CNT)-filled polymer blends, i.e., CNT-filled polyethylene terephthalate (PET)/ polyvinylidene fluoride, PET/nylon 6,6, PET/polypropylene, and PET/high-density polyethylene blends, have been injection-molded and characterized in terms of their microstructures, electrical conductivities, and mechanical properties. The distribution of CNTs in the polymer blends has been examined based on their wetting coefficients and minimization of the interfacial energy. The electrical conductivity and mechanical properties have been related to the cocontinuous polymer blends, the conductive path formed by CNTs, the CNT distribution, and the intrinsic properties of the constituent polymers. It is found that to obtain a CNT-filled polymer composite with both high electrical conductivity and good mechanical properties, it is preferred that most CNTs distribute in one polymer phase, while the other polymer phase(s) remain neat.

Selective Localization and Migration of Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes in Blends of Polycarbonate and Poly(styrene‐acrylonitrile)

“…[1,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] Some of the authors compared the predication of the wetting coefficient or equivalent equations that describe the localization of conductive fillers in an immiscible two phase blend to their experimental observations. [2,5,9,10,19,21] Preferential localization of a filler in one of the phases is commonly explained by the differences in interfacial energies of the filler and the respective polymers, which originates from the differing polarities and surface energies. In general, the authors used polymers that show pronounced differences in surface energies and polarities and, therefore, received distinct predications of the wetting coefficients.…”

Selective Dye Loading at the Heterojunction in Polymer/Fullerene Solar Cells

“…[19][20][21][22][23][24] These studies suggested that the material with the lower surface energy is likely to be segregated into the air/fi lm interface while the material with higher surface energy is segregated to the fi lm/electrode interface, indicating that the vertical phase separation is strongly dependent on the surface energy of each material. For ternary blend fi lms, in which a third material is added to binary blends, the location of the third component has been studied for various materials such as conductive carbon black particles, [ 25 ] carbon nanotubes, [26][27][28] CaCO 3 nanoparticles, [ 29 ] and polymers. [ 30 ] These studies indicated that the location of the third component can be predicted in terms of the surface energy of each component in the ternary blends, which is in good agreement with the observation of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images.…”

Cellular structures of carbon nanotubes in a polymer matrix improve properties relative to composites with dispersed nanotubes

“…Plasticizers have been used in carbon black / elastomer composites to achieve improved mechanical properties, including hardness, elastic modulus and elongation at break, as compared to the elastomer [13]. Wu et al have reported a two-phase conductive composite system in which most of the SWCNTs are located in the continuous polymer matrix, while a dispersed polymer phase modifies the mechanical and rheological properties of the composites [14].…”