The Fabrication of Hierarchical Carbon Nanotube/carbon fibre/polyethylene Composites via Twin Screw Extruder

¹ Research Schoole of Engineering, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
² Institute of Materials Science, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China

^a Corresponding author: qinghua.qin@anu.edu.au

Abstract

In this research, the hierarchical carbon nanotube/carbon fibre/polyethylene (CNT/CF/PE) composites were fabricated via the conventional twin-screw extrusion technique. For this multi-component composite, 1% wt CNTs were uniformly coated onto the surface of CF by using spray coating method. The effect of CNTs and CFs as reinforcing fillers on the mechanical properties was investigated through mechanical test and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) characterization. It has been found that with the content increase of CFs (i.e. 0% wt, 5% wt, 10% wt, 15% wt, 20% wt, 25% wt), both of tensile strength and tensile modulus exhibited an upward trend. Moreover, CF/PE composites with CNT coatings have higher mechanical performance than the counterparts without CNT coatings. The SEM results demonstrated that with the spray coating of CNTs onto CFs, the surface roughness of CFs was increased, thus contributing to the improvement of interfacial bonding between the reinforcement (CFs) and the matrix (PE).