Abstract
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as fillers in the polymer matrix help tune the electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties in polymer-CNT nanocomposite (PCN). Ease of processing, the ability to integrate with the existing production lines, and design flexibility have led to its extensive research in the last few decades. From a fundamental standpoint, CNTs in a polymer matrix influence its crystallization behavior and substantially impact the composites’ mechanical properties. CNTs act as nucleating agents resulting in heterogeneous nucleation in the composites. Unusual crystallization in some PCN systems leads to unique nanohybrid structures such as shish-kebab, transcrystallinity, and shish-calabash. Our focus in this chapter is on special/unusual crystallization in polymer and polymer blend systems, which remarkably influences its properties. We have highlighted studies that report nanohybrid shish-kebab morphology, fractionated crystallization in blends, and crystallization in the droplet-matrix morphology (with CNTs in the droplet phase).
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Sushmita, K., Muzata, T.S., Avasarala, S., Banerjee, P., Sharma, D., Bose, S. (2022). Crystallization Behavior of Carbon Nanotube Polymer Nanocomposites. In: Abraham, J., Thomas, S., Kalarikkal, N. (eds) Handbook of Carbon Nanotubes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91346-5_17
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