Abstract
Conductive plastics are made by placing conductive fillers in polymer matrices. It is known that a conductive filler in a binary polymer blend with a co-continuous morphology is more effective than in a single polymer, because it aids the formation of a ‘segregated conductive network’. We embedded a relatively low-cost conductive filler, aluminium nano platelets, in a 60/40 PBT/PET polymer blend. While 25 vol.% of the Al nanoplatelets when placed in a single polymer (PET) gave a material with the resistivity of an insulator (1014 Ωcm), the same Al nano platelets in the 60/40 PBT/PET blend reduced the resistivity to 7.2 × 107 Ωcm, which is in the category of an electrostatic charge dissipation material. While PET tends to give amorphous articles, the 60/40 PBT/PET blends crystallised in the time scale of the injection moulding and hence the conductive articles had dimensional stability above the Tg of PET.
Highlights
There is a demand for thermally and electrically conductive plastics due to applications in electronics, and the emerging electric car segment
Housings for electronics can be built of metal, but where mobility is involved in the application [1], light-weighting is desired, and conductive plastics would be the solution
We demonstrate that the same Al platelets which showed electrical insulator behaviour with 25 vol.% in amorphous poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) [18] led to a conductive plastic in the electrostatic charge dissipation range, in a 60/40 Polybutylene terephthalate (PBT)/PET co-continuous blend
Summary
There is a demand for thermally and electrically conductive plastics due to applications in electronics, and the emerging electric car segment. PBT/polyamide 6 blend and Bai et al [11] with graphene in a co-continuous blend of polylactide and poly(ethylene-co-vinyl acetate) Another concept that is currently being explored to achieve electrical and/or thermal conductivity with lower filler content is to use ‘hybrid fillers’, for example, graphite particles + carbon fibres (Thongruang et al [12]), carbon black + short carbon fibres (Leng et al [13]), and CNTs + graphene (Perets et al [14]). If the moulded article is amorphous, it will soften and lose shape above the Tg , whereas a semi-crystalline article is limited by its Tm. Here, we demonstrate that the same Al platelets which showed electrical insulator behaviour with 25 vol.% in amorphous PET [18] led to a conductive plastic in the electrostatic charge dissipation range, in a 60/40 PBT/PET co-continuous blend. Polymers 2022, 14, 1092 were semi-crystalline instead of amorphous, they showed resistance to shrinkage and of 25 warping above the Tg of the PET
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