Graphene/polyethylene terephthalate nanocomposites with enhanced mechanical and thermal properties
2018
Nanocomposites made of poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) and graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) were fabricated through micro-compounding and micro-injection molding. With an objective of improving the interactions between GNP sheets and PET chains, PET pellets were ground into a fine powder. PET pellets and powders were mixed with GNPs at 2%, 5%, 7.5%, and 10% (wt.%), molded to fabricate the nanocomposites, and then tested using several analytical characterization tools. Mechanical testing showed greater improvement through powder mixing, resulting in a 58% increase in the elastic modulus of the nanocomposites at 10% weight fraction. Thermal behavior of the nanocomposites was evaluated through differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and it was observed that addition of GNPs into PET powders at 10% increased the crystallinity of the PET 50%. Confocal microscopy confirmed that mixing GNP with PET powders results in a more uniform distribution of the GNPs in the matrix compared to the mixture with PET pellets. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis confirmed the presence of GNPs with preferred orientation within the PET matrix.
Keywords:
- Correction
- Source
- Cite
- Save
- Machine Reading By IdeaReader
61
References
17
Citations
NaN
KQI