Structure and electrical properties of grafted polypropylene/graphite nanocomposites prepared by solution intercalation

✍ Scribed by Jing-Wei Shen; Xiao-Mei Chen; Wen-Yi Huang

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2003
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 277 KB
• Volume: 88
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-8995
• DOI: 10.1002/app.11892

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

A novel process was developed to prepare electrically conducting maleic anhydride grafted polypropylene (__g__PP)/expanded graphite (EG) nanocomposites by solution intercalation. The conducting percolation threshold at room temperature (Φ~c~) of the nanocomposites was 0.67 vol %, much lower than that of the conventional conducting composites prepared by melt mixing (Φ~c~ = 2.96 vol %). When the EG content was 3.90 vol %, the electrical conductivity (σ) of the former reached 2.49 × 10^−3^ S/cm, whereas the σ of the latter was only 6.85 × 10^−9^ S/cm. The TEM, SEM, and optical microscopy observations confirmed that the significant decrease of Φ~c~ and the striking increase of σ might be attributable to the formation of an EG/__g__PP conducting multiple network in the nanocomposites, involving the network composed of particles with a large surface‐to‐volume ratio and several hundred micrometers in size, and the networks composed of the boards or sheets of graphite with high width‐to‐thickness ratio and particles of fine microscale or nanoscale sizes. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 88: 1864–1869, 2003