Effect of the Addition of Carbon Nanomaterials on Electrical and Mechanical Properties of Wood Plastic Composites

Abstract

Wood Plastic Composites (WPCs) are a new generation of green composites that could optimize the use of harvested trees and increase the entire value chain. In this study, the electrical and mechanical properties of WPCs containing carbon blacks (CB), flake graphite (FG) and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been investigated. The electrical property of WPCs is improved significantly owing to the introduction of these carbon nanomaterial fillers. The volume and surface resistivity values of the investigated composites all obviously decreased with the increase in filler content, especially CNTs, which displayed the most satisfactory results. Based on a series of laboratory experiments carried out to investigate the mechanical performance, it can be concluded that the addition of the carbon nanomaterial fillers decreases the mechanical properties of WPCs slightly with the increase in filler content because of the weak interfacial interactions between the fillers and polymer matrix.

Fabrication and Enhanced Thermal Conductivity of Boron Nitride and Polyarylene Ether Nitrile Hybrids

“…It can be seen that all composites exhibit excellent mechanical properties (Table 1). Generally, the tensile strength of composites decreases due to incompatibility between the inorganic fillers and the organic polymer matrix [37]. Additionally, the fillers tend to aggregate at higher content.…”

Development of the Electrical Conductivity in Carbon Based Polymer Composites

“…It is also called as percolation threshold and if the carbon black content increased further, a dense and saturated conductive network was constructed with slowly increasing conductivity [13]. Finally, it can be expressed that the microstructure of the composites including both graphite and carbon black fillers are convenient to previous studies in literature [14].…”

A Review of Multiple Scale Fibrous and Composite Systems for Heating Applications

“…Three types of carbon nanomaterials, namely carbon blacks, flake graphite and carbon nanotubes, were used to improve the electrical properties of wood plastic composites [ 86 ]. A significant improvement in the electrical conductivity was observed upon the addition of nanomaterials, with decreased resistivity to the electricity flow with the increase in weight fractions.…”

“…Among all of them, CNTs gave the best results, with the highest decrement in resistivity (6 × 10 5 Ω.m) obtained for the composites with 12 wt% CNTs. This can be explained by the formation of a conductive network that reduced the resistivity of the composite [ 86 ].…”