Tribological and thermomechanical evaluation of polypropylene nanocomposites containing different dimensional structures of carbon and ceramic nanoparticles

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study describes the development of PP nanocomposites using hydrothermally assembled carbon nanotubes (CNTs)/barium titanium (BT) (denoted as BTC) and graphene nanosheets (GNs)/boron nitride (BN) (denoted as BNG) nanoparticles. The PP nanocomposites were fabricated via the development of a masterbatch using polypropylene maleic anhydride (PPMA), followed by diluting with pure PP via melt compounding. The wear resistance and thermomechanical properties of the nanocomposites exhibited a substantial improvement, where about 96.8% increase in wear resistance and low coefficient of friction were recorded. While about 230% increase in glass transition temperature was measured with the nanocomposites relative to the pure PP. The developed nanocomposites have potential applications in automobile and other machine components where high wear resistance and thermal-mechanical properties are required.