The influence of coiled nanostructure on the enhancement of dielectric constants and electromagnetic shielding efficiency in polymer composites

摘要

Polymer composites containing conducting fillers have been extensively investigated for various applications such as electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding, electronic packaging, radar absorption, and high charge storage capacitors. However, presently used composites require high filler to polymer loading ratios which deteriorates the overall mechanical properties, through destruction of intrinsic matrix morphology. A possible way to ameliorate the above problems, through using low filler volume fractions, incorporates carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in composites. A concomitant large aspect ratio and tunable electrical conductivity would enable electrical percolation to be achieved at very small CNT volume fractions, with large shielding efficiencies being obtained. However, economic costs and clustering of the CNTs within the polymer matrix are issues that have to be overcome prior to large scale application. In this paper, we tackle the clustering problem by considering the synthesis of well dispersed functionalized CNT composites.