Developed carbon nanotubes/gutta percha nanocomposite films with high stretchability and photo-thermal conversion efficiency

Abstract

It is necessary to develop novel nanocomposite films for reducing soil pollution caused by the use of petroleum-based materials. In this paper, a simple solvent-cast method was used to fabricate gutta percha films with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by homogeneously dispersing different amount of CNTs (0%, 0.5%, 1%, 1.5% and 2%, wt/%) through gutta percha matrix. The obtained nanocomposite films were characterized by Raman spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Meanwhile, the wettability, mechanical properties, water vapor barrier properties, electromagnetic absorption of films as well as their photo-thermal conversion of the soil were investigated in detail. The results showed that the 1% loading of CNTs film significantly improved the mechanical properties of the nanocomposite films compared to the control: the tensile strength, elongation at break and Young's modulus were increased by 44.0%, 30.5% and 26.1%, respectively. In addition, the CNTs/gutta percha films demonstrated lower thermal stability, glass transition temperature (Tg), melting enthalpy (ΔHm) crystallinity and water vapor permeability (WVP) than the pristine gutta percha film. Especially, the WVP value of the film with 1% CNTs was the lowest. And finally, the soil warming experiments showed that the 1% CNTs film had the highest 83.73% photo-thermal conversion efficiency, compared to the 18.61% for control. This nanocomposite film has the potential for application in agriculture in arid regions because of its high stretchability and photo-thermal conversion efficiency, which could be potential application in agricultural mulch.