title: Enhancement of electrical conductivity by changing phase morphology for composites consisting of polylactide and poly(ε-caprolactone) filled with acid-oxidized multiwalled carbon nanotubes.
abstract: Composites consisting of polylactide (PLA) and poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) filled with acid-oxidized multiwalled carbon nanotubes (A-MWCNTs) were prepared through melt compounding. Phase morphologies of PLA/PCL/A-MWCNT composites with different contents of filled A-MWCNTs and PCL compositions were mainly observed by scanning electron microscope. The results show that A-MWCNTs are selectively dispersed in the PCL phase, regardingless of PCL phase domain sizes. For PLA/PCL/A-MWCNT composites with fixed PLA/PCL ratio of 95/5, the dispersed PCL phase domain sizes in the PLA matrix decrease even though a small content of A-MWCNTs is added, compared with PLA/PCL blend with the same composition, indicating that A-MWCNTs effectively prevent from coalescence of the dispersed PCL phase domains. With filling of 1.0 wt % A-MWCNTs, an interesting change of electrical conductivity for PLA/PCL/A-MWCNT composites is observed, in which the maximum conductivity is observed for PLA/PCL/A-MWCNT composite with PLA/PCL ratio of 60/40. The result is well-explained by the formed cocontinuous phase morphology and effective A-MWCNT content.
authors: CAS Key Laboratory of Soft Matter Chemistry, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui Province 230026, PR China.
authors: Zhaohua
authors: Z
authors: Xu
authors: Yaqiong
authors: Y
authors: Zhang
authors: Zhigang
authors: Z
authors: Wang
authors: Ning
authors: N
authors: Sun
authors: Heng
authors: H
authors: Li