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Crystallization induced enhancement on electrical conductivity and strength of highly conductive PP composites

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Abstract

A highly conductive and reinforced polypropylene/nickel coated glass fiber (PP/NCGF) composite is fabricated via a simple and efficient strategy. Nucleating agent induced crystallization leads to the sharp volume excluded effect and drives NCGFs into the amorphous region of PP matrix, thus the formation of conductive network connected by NCGFs is promoted remarkably. The incorporation of nucleating agent dibenzylidene sorbitol (DBS) improves the strength of composites simultaneously due to the enhanced crystallinity and the reinforced interfacial interaction. Accordingly, the percolation threshold of PP/NCGF composites is decreased to 0.35 vol% (Ni content) by loading DBS, and the conductivity increases by four order of magnitude around the percolation threshold which exceeds 70 S/m with the Ni content of only 0.47 vol%. The tensile strength of PP/NCGF composites is increased by about 30–40 % in all range of NCGF content. This exciting result provides a strategy to prepare high-performance conductive composites by crystallization-induced enhancement.

Nucleating agent induced crystallization leads to the sharp volume excluded effect and drives Ni coated glass fibers into the amorphous region of PP matrix, thus the formation of conductive network is promoted remarkably. The incorporation of nucleating agent improves the strength of composites simultaneously due to the enhanced crystallinity and the reinforced interfacial interaction.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of this work by Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Province (No. 2014021018-5).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Functional Nanocomposites of Shanxi Province, College of Materials Science and Engineering, North University of China, Taiyuan, 030051, People’s Republic of China

    Yaqi Yang, Tingting Hou, Chunyu Dong, Hongji Duan, Guizhe Zhao & Yaqing Liu

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  1. Yaqi Yang
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  2. Tingting Hou
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  3. Chunyu Dong
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  4. Hongji Duan
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  5. Guizhe Zhao
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Correspondence to Yaqi Yang or Yaqing Liu.

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Yang, Y., Hou, T., Dong, C. et al. Crystallization induced enhancement on electrical conductivity and strength of highly conductive PP composites. J Polym Res 23, 165 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10965-016-1065-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10965-016-1065-7

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