3D Printing of Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol–Sepiolite Composites with Nanoscale Orientation

Abstract

A fused-deposition modeling (FDM) 3D-printed polyethylene terephthalate glycol (PETG)–sepiolite composite showed effective synergetic mechanical reinforcement in tensile testing compared to an injection-molded composite. The results showed that the addition of 3 phr sepiolite improved the tensile strength of 3D-printed PETG samples by 35.4%, while the tensile strength of injection-molded PETG samples was improved by 7.2%. To confirm these phenomena, FDM PETG–sepiolite composites were investigated by small-angle X-ray scattering to correlate the nanostructures of the composites with their mechanical strengths. The small-angle X-ray scattering data and transmission electron microscopy observations demonstrated that needle-shaped sepiolite particles were aligned in the printing direction. This fine oriented nanostructure formed during 3D printing created a synergistic effect that improved the material properties of the composite. These novel PETG–sepiolite composites with enhanced mechanical properties can be promising materials fabricated via FDM 3D printing.

Thermal characterization of organically modified montmorillonite and short carbon fibers reinforced glycol‐modified polyethylene terephthalate nanocomposite filaments

“…However, the extent of nanoclay dispersion had little effect on the thermal stability of the composites. A similar study was conducted by Kim et al [21] for PETG-sepiolite composites where the glass transition temperature is seen to improve with higher sepiolite concentrations.…”

Investigation on the mechanical properties of additively manufactured PETG composites reinforced with OMMT nanoclay and carbon fibers

“…[21] Addition of sepiolite nanoparticles to PETG matrices showed better physical properties when they were 3D printed over injection molding. [22] The high oriented behavior of sepiolite particles in the former is responsible for this behavior. Szykiedans et al [23] assessed the influence of the print direction on the mechanical properties of 3D printed PETG parts.…”

A Brief Review of the Latest Advances of Attapulgite as a Reinforcing Agent in Polymer Matrix Nanocomposites

“…In addition, the ATP related peaks do not undergo significant changes, which indicates that the acid treatment does not destroy its crystalline structure (Fig. 3b) (Kim et al, 2020;Elbassyoni et al, 2020).…”

“…Several clay minerals have been widely studied to improve the mechanical properties of polymeric matrices, such as montmorillonite (Rodrigues Passos Severino et al, 2019;Passer et al, 2013a;2013b;Barbalho, 2012;Bai et al, 2018), halloysite (Bertolino et al, 2020;Lisuzzo et al, 2020;Alam et al, 2020), sepiolite (Ferrari et al, 2017;Kim et al, 2020;Fernández-Barranco et al, 2020;Wang et al, 2020;Sun et al, 2020;Di Credico et al, 2019) and attapulgite (palygorskite) (da Silva et al, 2020;Tian et al, 2020;Yang et al, 2020;Elbassyoni et al, 2020).…”