Selective Localization and Migration of Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes in Blends of Polycarbonate and Poly(styrene‐acrylonitrile)

Abstract

Multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) have been introduced into blends of polycarbonate (PC) and poly(styrene-acrylonitrile) (SAN) by melt mixing in a microcompounder. Co-continuous blends are prepared by either pre-compounding low amounts of nanotubes into PC or SAN or by mixing all three components together. Interestingly, in all blends, regardless of the way of introducing the nanotubes, the MWNTs were exclusively located within the PC phase, which resulted in much lower electrical resistivities as compared to PC or SAN composites with the same MWNT content. The migration of MWNTs from the SAN phase into the PC phase during common mixing is explained by interfacial effects.

Studies on the selective localization of multi-walled carbon nanotubes in blends of poly(vinylidene fluoride) and polycaprolactone

“…The sample size is 20 mm!20 mm!0.2 mm at least. The wide measurement range is 10 3 to 1.6·10 16 " with a 10 ms high-speed measurement. The interfacial tensions of PCL and PVDF melt were tested by the Krüss DSA 100 (Krüss Company, Ltd., Germany) apparatus with the pendant drop method at 200°C, respectively.…”

“…Many studies were carried out to deal with the problem [11][12][13][14]. The design of double percolation structure in composites is one of the methods to reduce the percolation threshold of conductive fillers [15][16][17][18][19][20][21].The concept of double percolation was first proposed by Sumita et al [21] in immiscible blends that were filled with carbon black. Two requirements are needed to realize the double percolation structure in composites.…”

“…The interfacial tensions of polymer at room temperature were used to predict the wetting coefficient [22,23,25], but sometimes results deviating from actual situation might be obtained. There are a few reports about CNT/PVDF composites prepared by double percolation concept [23,26]. But the interfacial effect for predicting the localization of conductive fillers was not studied at all.…”

Effect of homopolymer poly(vinyl acetate) on compatibility and mechanical properties of poly(propylene carbonate)/poly(lactic acid) blends

“…In these cases, the selective localization of compatibilizer at the interface between the blend components is of vital importance to manipulate interface properties. Selective localization of a third component in incompatible binary blends is mainly attributed to the difference in the affinity between the third component and the blend components [23,24]. Generally, the effective compatibilizer (e.g.…”

Conductivity of microfibrillar polymer-polymer composites with CNT-loaded microfibrils or compatibilizer: A comparative study

“…With lower filler content as the aim, CPCs based on polymer blends have been observed to achieve percolation at lower filler loadings than those based on a single polymer [12,[25][26][27]. This can be attributed to a mechanism called double-percolation [28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35] i.e., the filler is selectively localized in one of the blend components forming a conductive network. However, in most of these cases the two polymers have weak interfacial adhesion, resulting in poor mechanical properties of the blend.…”