Polymer composites with aligned carbon nanotubes for high performance

Abstract

In this study, the improvement in electrical and mechanical properties as a result of the addition of carbon black (CB) and carbon nanotubes (CNT) fillers to silicone elastomer was investigated. The wet mixing method was used to improve dispersion of carbon fillers in the matrix. It was found that increasing amount of carbon black fillers alone was able to result in a decrease in electrical resisitivity and increase in Young’s Modulus of the resulting composite. With the addition of 0.5 vol % of carbon nanotubes into the carbon black composite, both properties were seen to further improve by a considerable amount. This is especially significant when carbon nanotubes were aligned into straight chains when exposed to an external magnetic field.