Abstract
In preparing a non-polar polymer composite employing functional fillers, the chemical inertness of non-polar polymer does not easily allow efficient interfacial affinity change. Here, a wet-free interfacial affinity modulation to incompatible polypropylene (PP)/graphite nanoplatelet (GNP) composite was performed with a nitrogen plasma-assisted mechanochemical (PM) treatment. It was surprising that the PP/GNP composite subjected to the PM treatment demonstrated the formation of chemical bonds between PP and GNP and the dramatic improvement of GNP dispersion in PP, resulting in a novel PP composite deploying efficient heat transfer along with mechanical performance comparable to that of neat PP. Due to the interfacial affinity control, the elongation at break of the PM-treated PP/GNP composite with 5 wt% of GNP was improved ten-folds compared to the untreated PP/GNP composite. The thermal conductivity of the PM-treated PP/GNP composite employing 20 wt% of GNP reached ca. 21 W/mK, whereas the untreated PP/GNP composite containing comparable amount of GNP exhibited 7 W/mK. Based on the findings, it can be noted that a solvent-free plasma-assisted mechanochemical treatment could be meaningful in developing a novel composite capable of efficient mechanical load transfer and heat transfer with non-polar polymers known to be poor at chemical reaction.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 346-353 |
Number of pages | 8 |
Journal | Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry |
Volume | 107 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2022 Mar 25 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research was financially supported by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) and the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) as part of the Culture Technology (CT) Research & Development Program (2R2019020040). M. Kim, J. H. Park and S.-S. Lee also acknowledge the financial support from the 2021 internal project of KIST.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Korean Society of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry
Keywords
- Graphite nanoplatelet
- Heat transfer composite
- Interfacial affinity modulation
- Non-polar polymer
- Plasma-assisted mechanochemistry
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Chemical Engineering