Abstract
Wood Plastic Composites (WPCs) are a new generation of green composites that could optimize the use of harvested trees and increase the entire value chain. In this study, the electrical and mechanical properties of WPCs containing carbon blacks (CB), flake graphite (FG) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been investigated. The electrical property of WPCs is improved significantly owing to the introduction of these carbon nanomaterial fillers. The volume and surface resistivity values of the investigated composites all obviously decreased with the increase in filler content, especially CNTs, which displayed the most satisfactory results. Based on a series of laboratory experiments carried out to investigate the mechanical performance, it can be concluded that the addition of the carbon nanomaterial fillers decreases the mechanical properties of WPCs slightly with the increase in filler content because of the weak interfacial interactions between the fillers and polymer matrix.
Highlights
Wood plastic composites (WPCs) have been widely utilized in siding, roofing, windows, door frames, and the outdoor furniture industry in recent years due to their improved mechanical properties, low processing cost, and biological performance
We introduced carbon blacks (CB), flake graphite (FG) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) particles as conductive fillers to improve the electrical properties of WPCs
WPCs were prepared by incorporating carbon nanomaterials to improve their electrical and mechanical properties
Summary
Wood plastic composites (WPCs) have been widely utilized in siding, roofing, windows, door frames, and the outdoor furniture industry in recent years due to their improved mechanical properties, low processing cost, and biological performance. WPCs show excellent electronic insulation properties; WPC slats attract dust, which can cause static powder explosions and generate serious damage in equipment rooms, operating rooms or electronic component workshops [4] To avoid these problems, antistatic WPCs must be developed by adding conductive filler to the polymer matrices during fabrication. The variation of many parameters, such as CNT type, growth method and chemical pre-treatment, as well as polymer type and processing strategy, have given some encouraging results in fabricating relatively strong CNT-polymer composites [11,12,13,14,15] These carbon nanomaterials, used as conductive fillers to enhance the electrical and mechanical properties of WPCs, have never been truly investigated. Particular emphasis was focused on assessing the effect of filler weight fractions on the morphology, and the electrical and mechanical properties of the WPCs
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