Abstract
Polypropylene (PP) / multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) nanocomposites were prepared by melt-mixing and used to manufacture samples by injection molding. The effect of processing conditions on the crystallinity and electrical resistivity was studied. Accordingly, samples were produced varying the mold temperature and injection rate, and the DC electrical resistivity was measured. The morphology of MWCNT clusters was studied by optical and electron microscopy, while X-ray diffraction was used to study the role of the crystalline structure of PP. As a result, an anisotropic electrical behavior induced by the process was observed, which is further influenced by the injection molding processing condition. It was demonstrated that a reduction of electrical resistivity can be obtained by increasing mold temperature and injection rate, which was associated to the formation of the γ-phase and the related inter-cluster morphology of the MWCNT conductive network.
Highlights
In the last decades, an increasing interest in electrically conductive polymer composites has been observed, with special focus on traditional insulating polymers filled with electrically conductive additives [1]
X-ray diffraction (XRD) techniques have been used to highlight the role of the crystalline structure of PP on the morphology and electrical properties of the produced samples
The tendency of the nanocomposites to change their rheological behavior from a liquid-like to a solid-like material is evident and it can be due to the formation of a filler network, increasingly denser with the multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT)
Summary
An increasing interest in electrically conductive polymer composites has been observed, with special focus on traditional insulating polymers filled with electrically conductive additives [1]. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been identified as a very promising filler to obtain high-performance nanocomposites [3,4] Due to their chain-like aggregated structure, they tend to form a conductive path within the polymer matrix, which is more effective if compared with other conductive additives, and which is well-described by the percolation theory [5,6,7]. We perform a study on PP/MWCNT nanocomposites, focused on the correlation of the injection-molding processing conditions (i.e., mold temperature and injection flow rate) with the resulting specific crystalline structure and the electrical behavior
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