Effect of Carbon Nanotubes on Properties of Graphite/Carbon Black/Polypropylene Nanocomposites

摘要

High chemical corrosion, low manufacturing cost and light of total mass of bipolar plate in Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEMFC) lead most of the PEMFC's researchers over the world attracted their interest to replace pure graphite or metal based bipolar plate with conductive polymer composites (CPCs) bipolar plate. CPCs is fabricate from the mixed of conductive fillers such as and Graphite (G) andCarbon Black (CB) had been incorporated in Polypropylene (PP) matrix for fabrication of electrical conductive polymer composite plate. Most researchers reported only at high loading of fillers (more than 90 wt.%), are gave electrical conductivity above 100 S/cm, which is target from Department of Energy (USA). Higher loading of fillers cause change in rheological properties and increase the difficulties in polymer processing. Thus will decreasing the electrical and mechanical properties of CPCs as bipolar plate. Therefore, in this study carbon nanotubes (CNTs) which have 1000 time electrical conductivity than copper wire are introduced into G/CB/PP composite to compensate above problems. But the main problems of CNTs, at high loading it tend to agglomerate and thus will affect the properties of CPCs. So that, small amount of CNTs which is 0.2, 0.4, 0.6 and 0.8 wt.% will be added into G/CB/PP composite. But weight percentage of CB and PP has been fixed which is 25 wt.% and 20 wt.% respectively and the weight percentage of G will various from 55 wt.% to 54.2 wt.% according to CNTs loading. The result shows that the G/CB/CNTs/PP composite with 0.2 wt% CNTs has the higher electrical conductivity 295.78 S/cm.