Abstract
ABSTRACTIn the present work we studied the flow induced multiwalled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) orientation and the mechanisms governing the kinetics of nanotube reorientation and three‐dimensional network restructuring in poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO)/MWCNT nanocomposites. For this purpose, the linear and nonlinear viscoelastic experiments including frequency sweep, time sweep and transient tests were performed on PEO/MWCNT samples varying in MWCNT content. The extent as well as kinetics of network restructuring was found to be strongly dependent upon the amount of preshearing (shear rate and shearing time) and MWCNT concentration. The results also showed two mechanisms for structural recovery; a fast restructuring at the beginning due to rejoining of clusters and unoriented adjacent nanotube and much slower recovery in the longer annealing times due to Brownian motion. The latter mechanism was found to be uncompleted over 3600 s annealing. This was supported by aij (orientation tensors) calculated based on transmission electron micrograph. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015, 132, 41753.
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