The incorporation of carbon nanofibres to enhance the properties of hot compacted self-reinforced single polymer composites

Nanoscale fillers offer the potential for significant enhancement of a range of polymer properties, as they are available in a wide variety of shapes and properties. Carbon nanotubes (CNT) and nanofibres (CNF) have been used extensively in the literature, yet very few analytical studies of the material properties have been reported. Here we use the Cox-Krenchel model to interpret the experimentally measured changes in Young’s modulus from particle aspect ratio reduction during to processing, in addition to the measurement of the mechanical properties of the composite.

Hot Compaction, a process developed at the University of Leeds [1], utilises high modulus, highly oriented elements to form thick section, homogeneous sheets without the need to introduce a second phase of different chemical composition. These ‘single polymer’ composites are produced by selective melting on the surface of the oriented elements; on cooling, this molten material re-crystallises to form a matrix phase and bind the oriented elements together. CNF filled polypropylene (PP) tapes have been produced and successfully hot compacted into sheets. The properties of these nanofilled self-reinforced single polymer composites is reported. Of particular interest has been to investigate the introduction of interleaved films, an extension of recent work conducted by two of this papers authors [2] of the same polymer or nanocomposite in order to establish the change in properties when the CNF are incorporated in the drawn tapes, in the interleaved films or both.