Morphological, mechanical and thermal properties of PA6 nanocomposites Co-Incorporated with Nano-Al2O3 and graphene oxide fillers

Abstract

In this paper, the surface hydroxylation modification of nano-alumina (nano-Al2O3) to result nano-Al2O3–OH and the chemical modification of graphene oxide (GO) by using silane coupling agent to produce GO-KH560 were first carried out respectively, followed by solution compounding to synthesis a novel three-dimensional functional hybrid filler (nano-Al2O3–OH/GO-KH560), and then polyamide 6 (PA6)/nano-Al2O3–OH/GO-KH560 (abbreviated as P-A-OH-G-KH560) thermally conductive nanocomposites were fabricated by melt blending technique and investigated for its morphological, mechanical and thermal properties. Morphological characterization revealed better dispersion of nano-Al2O3 and GO in the PA6 nanocomposites, which is attributed to the improved interfacial interaction between the PA6 and hybrid fillers. Loading of the hybrid fillers in the PA6 nanocomposites resulted in the significant improvement in mechanical properties such as tensile strength and elastic modulus and this effect is more pronounced on the increasing the hybrid fillers loading amount, when compared to the PA6 and pristine nano-Al2O3 filled system. Differential scanning calorimetric analysis showed that the crystallization of the PA6 nanocomposites was improved. The thermal conductivity of the P-A-OH-G-KH560 (100/5/0.8) nanocomposite increased by 86.13% compared with that of pure PA6. In summary, PA6 nanocomposites with fairly good mechanical and thermal conductivity are obtained at low filler contents.