Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Nov 6;11(11):1827.
doi: 10.3390/polym11111827.

Selection of Immiscible Polymer Blends Filled with Carbon Nanotubes for Heating Applications

Louis Marischal  1 , Aurélie Cayla  1 , Guillaume Lemort  1 , Christine Campagne  1 , Éric Devaux  1
Affiliations

Selection of Immiscible Polymer Blends Filled with Carbon Nanotubes for Heating Applications

Louis Marischal et al. Polymers (Basel). .

Abstract

In many application fields, such as medicine or sports, heating textiles use electrically conductive multifilaments. This multifilament can be developed from conductive polymer composites (CPC), which are blends of an insulating polymer filled with electrically conductive particles. However, this multifilament must have filler content above the percolation threshold, which leads to an increase of the viscosity and problems during the melt spinning process. Immiscible blends between two polymers (one being a CPC) can be used to allow the reduction of the global filler content if each polymer is co-continuous with a selective localization of the fillers in only one polymer. In this study, three immiscible blends were developed between polypropylene, polyethylene terephthalate, or polyamide 6 and a filled polycaprolactone with carbon nanotubes. The morphology of each blend at different ratios was studied using models of co-continuity and prediction of fillers localization according to viscosity, interfacial energy, elastic modulus, and loss factor of each polymer. This theoretical approach was compared to experimental values to find out differences between methods. The electrical properties (electrical conductivity and Joule effect) were also studied. The co-continuity, the selective localization in the polycaprolactone, and the Joule effect were only exhibited by the polypropylene/filled polycaprolactone 50/50 wt.%.

Keywords: Joule effect; co-continuity; conductive polymer composite (CPC); heating textile; immiscible polymer blends; localization of fillers.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Evolution of the electrical conductivity (log[S/m]) and the model of Kirkpatrick and Zallen according to the filler content of MWCNT in PCL (wt.%).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Results of co-continuity of models of Mikes and Zurek, Metelkin and Blekht, and Bourry and Favis for the blend PA6/PCLMWCNT, PP/PCLMWCNT, and PET/PCLMWCNT according to the weight percent of filled PCL with 1.5 wt.% of MWCNT (wt.%).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Comparison of percentage of filled PCL with 1.5 wt.% of MWCNT (wt.%) in PA6/PCLMWCNT, PP/PCLMWCNT, and PET/PCLMWCNT according to the PCL accessibility degree (%).
Figure 4
Figure 4
SEM images of PA6/PCLMWCNT (a) 70/30, (b) 60/40, (c) 50/50; PP/PCLMWCNT (d) 70/30, (e) 60/40, (f) 50/50; and PET/PCLMWCNT (g) 70/30, (h) 60/40, (i) 50/50 after phase extraction.
Figure 5
Figure 5
SEM images of PA6/PCLMWCNT 50/50 (a,b); PP/PCLMWCNT 50/50 (c–e); and PET/PCLMWCNT 50/50 (f–h).
Figure 6
Figure 6
Comparison of the electrical conductivity (log[S/m]) according to the percentage of PCLMWCNT (wt.%) for the blends of PA6/PCLMWCNT, PP/PCLMWCNT, and PET/PCLMWCNT.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Comparison of the temperature (°C) increase according to the time (s) for the blends of PA6/PCLMWCNT, PP/PCLMWCNT, and PET/PCLMWCNT.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Asghar A., Ahmad M.R., Yahya M.F. Effects of metal filament’s alignment on tensile and electrical properties of conductive hybrid cover yarns. Fash. Text. 2016;3:3. doi: 10.1186/s40691-015-0055-4. - DOI
    1. Hamdani S.T.A., Potluri P., Fernando A. Thermo-mechanical behavior of textile heating fabric based on silver coated polymeric yarn. Materials. 2013;6:1072–1089. doi: 10.3390/ma6031072. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Zhang L., Baima M., Andrew T.L. Transforming commercial textiles and threads into sewable and weavable electric heaters. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces. 2017;9:32299–32307. doi: 10.1021/acsami.7b10514. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Rivière L., Lonjon A., Dantras E., Lacabanne C., Olivier P., Gleizes N.R. Silver fillers aspect ratio influence on electrical and thermal conductivity in PEEK/Ag nanocomposites. Eur. Polym. J. 2016;85:115–125. doi: 10.1016/j.eurpolymj.2016.08.003. - DOI
    1. Ounaies Z., Park C., Wise K.E., Siochi E.J., Harrison J.S. Electrical properties of single wall carbon nanotube reinforced polyimide composites. Compos. Sci. Technol. 2003;63:1637–1646. doi: 10.1016/S0266-3538(03)00067-8. - DOI

LinkOut - more resources