Electric heating behavior of reduced oxide graphene/carbon nanotube/natural rubber composites with macro‐porous structure and segregated filler network

Abstract

Conductive polymer composites with carbonaceous fillers are very attractive and play a significant role in the field of electric heaters owing to their lightweight, corrosion resistance, and easy processing as well as low manufacturing cost. In this study, lightweight reduced oxide graphene/carbon nanotube/natural rubber (rGO/CNT/NR) composites were fabricated by a facile and cost‐effective approach, which consists of rGO assembling on rubber latex particles and hydrogels formation due to the interaction network established between carbonaceous fillers and subsequent mild‐drying of the resulting hydrogels. Thanks to the amphiphilic nature of GO sheets, which can serve as a surfactant, the hydrophobic CNTs were easily dispersed into water under ultrasound. On the basis of both the high stable rGO and CNTs suspension and the assembling of rGO on rubber latex, a three‐dimensional segregated network of CNT and rGO were easily constructed in macro‐porous composites. Either the segregated network and macro‐porous structure endowed the resulting composites with low density (0.45 g cm−3), high electrical conductivity (0.60 S m−1), and excellent electric heating behavior, when the weight content of rGO and CNTs are 0.5% and 2.5%, respectively. For electric heating behavior, the steady‐state temperature of the above composites reaches 69.1 °C at an input voltage of 15 V.