Abstract
It is well known that carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have excellent electrical properties and can be used as the nanofiller in natural polymers to produce conductive CNT/polymer nanocomposites. In this study, the conductive behavior of CNT-reinforced natural polymer nanocomposites was investigated. The effect of CNT concentration on the conductivity of CNT/natural polymer nanocomposites was also investigated. The natural polymers used were plasticized starch (PS) and chitosan (CS). FTIR spectroscopy was used to examine the interactions between PS, CS, and CNTs. TEM analysis on both nanocomposites were made to study the dispersion states of CNTs in both polymers. The results showed that the surface resistivities of both CNT/PS and CNT/CS nanocomposites decreased steeply with increasing CNT concentration. Particularly, the CNT/CS nanocomposites showed a better conductivity than the CNT/PS composites at the same CNT concentration. The TEM result showed that CNT/CS nanocomposites had better dispersibility and formation of fully connected, three-dimensional network structures between the CNTs than the CNT/PS nanocomposites, which results in the superior conductive property of CNT/CS nanocomposites compared to the CNT/PS nanocomposites.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2487-2493 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | Research on Chemical Intermediates |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2014 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Acknowledgment This work was financially supported by the National R&D project of ‘‘Development of Energy Utilization technology of Deep Sea Water Resource’’ supported by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries of the Republic of Korea.
Keywords
- Carbon nanotubes (CNTs)
- Chitosan (CS)
- Nanocomposites
- Plasticized starch (PS)