Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers modified with thermoplastic nonwovens containing multi-walled carbon nanotubes

Abstract The main purpose of this work was to improve the electrical conductivity of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymers (CFRP) by implementing novel thermoplastic nonwovens doped with carbon nanotubes. For this, two types of nonwovens containing carbon nanotubes were produced by the extrusion and thermal pressing of fibers. Nonwovens were placed between each layer of prepregs and CFRPs were fabricated using an out-of-autoclave method. It was found that implementation of nonwovens with 7 wt% of multi-walled carbon nanotubes resulted in improved surface and volume electrical conductivity in all directions. Microstructure analysis revealed the good quality of the produced laminates and the random distribution of the nonwovens in the composite panels. Examination of loss and storage moduli by dynamic mechanical analysis showed the higher flexibility of the laminates and the appearance of an additional glass transition peak due to the presence of copolyamide in the nonwovens used.