Abstract
Carbon nanotubes (CNT) embedded into a polymeric foam demonstrate an enhancement in electrical and mechanical properties of the final nanocomposite. The enhanced material with new characteristics, e.g., piezoresistivity, can be substituted with the traditional metallic material to design sensors, switches, and knobs directly into a single multifunctional component. Research activities in this field are moving towards a mono-material fully integrated smarts components. In order to achieve this goal, a simple method is developed to produce piezoresistive polyurethane/CNT foams. The novelty consists in applying the dispersion of CNT considering industrial production constrains, in order to facilitate its introduction into a common industrial practice. Three kinds of PU-CNT foam have been prepared and tested: PU-CNT 1.5%, PU-CNT-COOH 1.0%, and PU-CNT-COOH 1.5%. Polyurethane with CNT-COOH showed an insulating-conductive transition phenomenon when the foam reaches the 80% of its compression strain with a Gauge factor (Gf) of about 30. Instead, PU-CNT showed conductivity only at 1.5% of filler concentration and a steady piezoresistive behavior with a Gf of 80. However, this samples did not show the insulating-conductive transition. Having improved the electromechanical properties of final nanocomposite polyurethane foam demonstrates that the proposed method can be applied differently for design sensors and switches.
Highlights
The automotive market is evolving towards smart vehicles where inter-vehicle communication systems support applications related to safety, comfort, info-mobility, and passenger entertainment
We fabricated piezoresistive PU/Carbon nanotubes (CNT) semi-rigid foam with the aim to investigate the possibility of obtaining a new production process for switches or sensors fully integrated with the material of a plastic component
Conductive CNT fillers were able to improve the electrical conductivity and mechanical property compared to the matrix alone
Summary
The automotive market is evolving towards smart vehicles where inter-vehicle communication systems support applications related to safety, comfort, info-mobility, and passenger entertainment. Most multi-material devices connected with metal wires represent the on-board vehicle electronic systems. Buttons, and sensors are usually inserted in the plastic component, after moulding, and this increases manufacturing cost. Different strategies have been tried to obtain smart nanocomposite with different properties, like piezoresistivity (sensors) and conductivity (electrical connection). The most recent researches proved that adding carbon nanoparticles (such as graphene nano platelets (GNP), or carbon black (CB), or carbon nanotubes (CNT)) to commercial polymer composites can provide an improvement of the mechanical behaviors [1,2,3], thermal conductivity [4,5], electric conductivity [6,7,8,9], and piezoresistive behavior [10,11,12,13,14]
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