Fabrication of High-Performance CNT Reinforced Polymer Composite for Additive Manufacturing by Phase Inversion Technique

Abstract

Additive Manufacturing (AM) of polymer composites has enabled the fabrication of highly customized parts with notably mechanical properties, thermal and electrical conductivity compared to un-reinforced polymers. Employing the reinforcements was a key factor in improving the properties of polymers after being 3D printed. However, almost all the existing 3D printing methods could make the most of disparate fiber reinforcement techniques, the fused filament fabrication (FFF) method is reviewed in this study to better understand its flexibility to employ for the proposed novel method. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as a desirable reinforcement have a great potential to improve the mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties of 3D printed polymers. Several functionalization approaches for the preparation of CNT reinforced composites are discussed in this study. However, due to the non-uniform distribution and direction of reinforcements, the properties of the resulted specimen do not change as theoretically expected. Based on the phase inversion method, this paper proposes a novel technique to produce CNT-reinforced filaments to simultaneously increase the mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties. A homogeneous CNT dispersion in a dilute polymer solution is first obtained by sonication techniques. Then, the CNT/polymer filaments with the desired CNT content can be obtained by extracting the polymer’s solvent. Furthermore, optimizing the filament draw ratio can result in a reasonable CNT orientation along the filament stretching direction.

Strength Evaluation of Functionalized MWCNT-Reinforced Polymer Nanocomposites Synthesized Using a 3D Mixing Approach

“…The enhancement in properties was reported for CNT and GNP-reinforced nanocomposites, as well as a further increase in the volume fraction and aspect ratio of the nanofillers, Young’s modulus E increases and Poisson’s ratio ν decreases. Parnian and D’Amore [ 34 ] presented a novel process to prepare CNT-reinforced filaments using the sol gel method to improve the mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties with the homogeneous dispersion of CNTs in a dilute polymer solution. The optimizing the filament can also reasonably improve the orientation of CNT in the filament.…”

Tribological properties of carbon nanotube/polymer composites:A mini-review

“…Due to the unique structure and excellent properties, CNTs were introduced to modify polymer for improving the properties of polymer such as mechanical properties, electrical properties, and thermal stability, which have been confirmed by the previous reports (Kotop et al, 2021;Parnian and D'Amore, 2021). Kang et al prepared CNT/PP composites by melt injection molding method.…”

Effects of non-uniformity in thickness and volume fraction of agglomerated CNTs on the dynamics of a spinning CNT-reinforced nanocomposite truncated conical shell

“…It is noteworthy that details on the manufacturing aspects of CNT-reinforced nanocomposites can be found in previously published papers. [37][38][39] Hamilton's principle…”

“…where the prime is hired to indicate derivative with respect to x. It is noteworthy that in equation (37), ω is the natural frequency and n is the circumferential wave number. By inserting equations ( 29) and (37) into equation ( 36), the relations below can be stated for the boundary conditions at x = 0 & L:…”