Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Hybrid Graphene/Halloysite Nanotubes Reinforced Polyethylene Terepthalate Nanocomposites

Abstract

In this work, the effects of graphene nanoplatelets (GNP) and halloysite nanotubes (HNT) constant ratio content and processing methods on the mechanical and thermal properties of polyethylene terepthalate (PET) nanocomposites were investigated. The GNP/HNT filled PET nanocomposites were prepared by melt process using single screw extruder and counter rotating twin screw extruder followed by injection molding to produce test samples. The mechanical properties of the nanocomposites was investigated by comparing the effect of extruder types on tensile, flexural and impact test. The results show that the nanocomposites with the ratio of 2 wt% GNP and 1 wt% HNT hybrids have the highest tensile strength, flexural strength and impact strength. By comparing the two processing methods, PET nanocomposites prepared by single screw extruder exhibits higher tensile strength than those prepared using twins screw extruder. Furthermore, the results of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) shows that the melting temperature of PET is not essentially affected by the presence of the hybrid nanofillers. However, the degree of crystallinity (Xc) and cold crystallization temperature (Tcc) were lower than pure PET with GNP2/HNT1 having the lowest Xc and Tcc. Overall the results show that the maximum improvement in mechanical and thermal properties were achieved by the combination of GNP and HNT in the nanocomposites with 2 wt% and 1 wt% respectively using the single screw extruder.