Mechanical and thermal behavior of carbon nanotubes/ vinyl ester nanocomposites

Abstract

Single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) and multi walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT)/ vinyl ester nanocomposites with three different contents of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been prepared by the simple melt-compounding method. A fine and homogeneous dispersion of CNTs throughout vinyl ester resin has been noticed by SEM images. Two mechanical tests (compression and three point bending test) show that, compared to neat vinyl ester resin, compression modulus and compression strength of the nanocomposites have been significantly improved by about 9% and 14%, respectively, when incorporating only 0.15 wt.% MWCNTs. Furthermore, thermal behavior of SWCNT and MWCNT/ vinyl ester nanocomposites has been investigated and discussed based on differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermo-mechanical analysis (TMA). Glass transition temperature (Tg) and coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) have been increased and decreased, respectively, with increasing of CNTs content.