Electrically Conductive Epoxy Nanocomposites

Conductive polymer nanocomposites have attracted much interest recently owing to their versatile applications, such as battery cathodes, microelectronics and sensors, etc. In this work, we introduced different conductive nanofillers in epoxy matrix, such as carbon nanofibers (CNFs), Fe@FeO and Fe@C core@shell structured nanoparticles (1-3) to make conductive nanocomposites. The loading effect of the fillers on conductivity is studied and percolation threshold (P_c) differs from each other arising from the different filler nanostructures. Generally, CNFs obtain lower P_c due to the larger aspect ratio of its fiber structure than that of the nanoparticles. All these epoxy nanocomposites show enhanced mechanical strength (from tensile test and dynamic mechanical analysis) and thermal stability (thermalgravimetric analysis) than that of pure epoxy. To improve the CNFs dispersion and interfacial interaction with epoxy matrix, surface modification with amine terminated functional group is applied. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) are used to characterize the filler distribution and interfacial interaction.

References

(1) Rheological behaviors and electrical conductivity of epoxy resin nanocomposites suspended with in-situ stabilized carbon nanofibers, Polymer, doi:10.1016/j.polymer.2010.04.019 , 2010

(2) In situ stabilized carbon nanofiber (CNF) reinforced epoxy nanocomposites, Journal of Materials Chemistry, DOI: 10.1039/c0jm00063a ,2010

(3) Magnetic Epoxy Resin Nanocomposites Reinforced with Core-Shell Structured Fe@FeO Nanoparticles: Fabrication and Property Analysis, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, DOI: 10.1021/am100361h, 2010