A new eco-friendly green composite for antistatic packaging: Green low-density polyethylene/glassy carbon

摘要

Antistatic packages are used to protect and storage sensitive electronic compounds, plates, and integrated circuit. To produce antistatic packages, polymers must have good mechanical properties and low electrical resistivity to prevent the accumulation of static electricity and damage the stored product. Many polymers can be used to produce packages, especially polyolefins. In the field of sustainable packaging, green low-density polyethylene (green LDPE) has been highlighting in recent years due to its origin: sugar cane. Thus, it is a green polymer that has the same properties as LDPE obtained from petroleum. Due to its insulating character, it is necessary the addition of conductive fillers, thus in this work, glassy carbon (GC) was used as a conductive filler. GC is a carbon material made from furfuryl alcohol resin obtained from rice husk or sugar cane, it is a conductive material and can decrease the electrical resistivity of the green LDPE/GC composite, making it possible to use as an antistatic packaging. Eco-friendly green composites based on green LDPE/GC with different contents of GC (0.1, 0.3, and 0.5 wt%) were prepared using a thermokinetic homogenizer. The green composites were characterized by mechanical and thermal properties, structural characteristics, water vapor permeability, optical properties, and impedance spectroscopy. The results indicate that the use of green LDPE/GC composites with low concentrations of GC (0.1 wt%) is feasible for the preparation of antistatic packaging since the green composites showed low electrical resistivity and improvement in elastic modulus.