Morphological, Thermal, Electrical and Electromechanical Properties of Polyvinylidene Fluoride (PVDF)-Functionalized Carbon Nanotube Composites (Preprint).

摘要

Functionalized carbon nanotubes (f-CNTs) reinforced polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) nanocomposites are prepared by high rate shear mixing of homogeneous suspension of f-CNTs and PVDF polymer with different weight fractions of f-CNTs. Morphology analyses show that microspheres of PVDF have been formed throughout the composite and carbon nanotubes are embedded within and in between the microspheres. As the concentration of carbon nanotubes increases in the polymer, end to end contact of the nanotubes takes place within the polymer sphere which coalesced to each other to form highly conducting path for electrons in the polymer. TGA confirms the stability of the nanocomposites as these are more thermally stable compared with base polymer. Due to reinforcement of 3 wt % of carbon nanotubes, nearly 25 deg C of onset decomposition temperature is achieved. DSC manifests the existence of polymer crystalline nature in the nanocomposites. Electrical conductivity results suggest that low percolation behavior has been observed in these micro-nano based polymer nanocomposites.