A Self-Assembled Electric Conductive Network in Short Carbon Fiber Filled Poly(methyl methacrylate) Composites with Selective Adsorption of Polyethylene

Bottom-up synthesis of PS–CNF nanocomposites

“…At 2 wt% CNF loading, the decrease is of five orders of magnitude and after 2 wt%, the resistivity continuously decreases with the increase of CNF loadings and it is below 1EC4 at 10.6 wt% (about 5 vol%) CNF loading. Compared with the percolation thresholds of reported polymer-CNF nanocomposites [32][33][34]36,37], Barraza's [49] result suggested that single wall CNTs are not well dispersed because the resistivity of their nanocomposites were high, even though the diameter of their single wall CNTs is 1.2-1.3 nm, which provides more surface area. The percolation threshold of CNT-poly (styrene-co-butyl acrylate) nanocomposites reported by Dufresne and coworkers [50] is about 1.5 vol% (3 wt%) CNT loading; considering the smaller diameter of their CNTs (30-50 nm) to the 200 nm diameter of our CNFs, our percolation threshold is lower.…”

“…Enomoto and coworkers [36] prepared CNF-polystyrene (PS) nanocomposites by injection molding; the percolation threshold is about 3-4% in volume (6-8 wt%). In polymer blend-CNF systems, the Sumita group [37] found that CNF selectively locates within one polymer phase and forms a network structure at a rather low concentration. In a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)/ high density polyethylene (HDPE)-CNF system, the percolation threshold of PMMA-CNF reduced from 8 to 4 wt% with the addition of 1% of HDPE, and this threshold further reduced to 1.5 wt% after the specimens were annealed at 220 8C for 30 min.…”

Anomalous transfer phenomenon of carbon nanotube in the blend of polyethylene and polycarbonate

“…Sumita et al also revealed that CBs selectively reside in polyethylene (PE) phase in the blend of PE and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), although PE is a nonpolar polymer [10]. Furthermore, Wu et al found that the addition of PE reduces the percolation threshold of the composite with vapor-grown carbon fibers (VGCFs) in PMMA [11]. They explained that it is attributed to the self-assembled conductive network constructed by selective adsorption of PE on the end part of the VGCF filament.…”

Piezoresistive Behavior Study on Finger‐Sensing Silicone Rubber/Graphite Nanosheet Nanocomposites

“…Therefore, much effort has been devoted to minimizing the filler concentration. [7][8][9] In our earlier work, graphite nanosheets (GNs) with diameters ranging from 5-20 lm and thicknesses from 30-80 nm were successfully incorporated into poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), [10] polystyrene (PS), [11] and nylon 6. [12] In each case only a slight amount of GN (about 1.0 vol %) was required to satisfy the critical percolation transition.…”