Highly conductive polymer composites with excellent toughness, fluidity and temperature‐independent conductivity

Abstract

Conductive polymer composites of low melting point metal/ high melting point metal/polymer were prepared by melt mixing and investigated the effects of Sn‐to‐Cu content ratio on the microstructure and properties of Sn/Cu/PA6 ternary composites with a metal content of 53.3 vol %. The results show that Sn reacts with Cu to form intermetallic compounds during melting processing. When VSn/VCu is less than 1.5, the metal phase is a solid. However, if VSn/VCu is higher than 1.5, the metal phase is a suspension. As VSn/VCu increases, the morphology of metal phase changes from “islands” to physically continuous networks, and the Volume resistivity, impact strength and complex viscosity of the composites can reach 1.11 × 10−4 Ω cm, 3.8 kJ/m2 and 2.4 × 103 Pa s, respectively. Moreover, the resistivity of the composites with physically continuous networks is almost independent of temperature. The combination of low and high melt point metals can be considered as a useful strategy to prepare conductive polymer composites with high performance. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2020, 137, 48820.

Emerging Research in Conductive Materials for Fused Filament Fabrication: A Critical Review

“…These LMPAs have the additional advantage of being highly conductive and able to form cocontinuous structures in thermoplastics (similar to the way cocontinuous structures are formed between blended immiscible polymers, Section 7.2). Li et al [ 245 ] demonstrated that, by varying the relative fractions of tin (low melting point metal) and copper (high melting point metal) in PA6 composites, the composite can change from a “sea‐island” morphology to a cocontinuous structure.…”