Crystallization kinetics of melt-mixed 3D hierarchical graphene/polypropylene nanocomposites at processing-relevant cooling rates
Journal article, 2022

Knowledge of the solidification behaviour of isotactic polypropylene (iPP) composites with reduced graphene oxide nanoplatelets is key to open the possibility to widespread use of these high performing nanocomposites. The crystallization behaviour of these systems, with filler content in the range of 0.2–3.5 wt% has been investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (up to 100 °C/min) and ex-situ structural and morphological characterization of samples prepared at processing-relevant cooling conditions (up to 2000 °C/s). Compared to the self-nucleated neat iPP, the nucleation efficiency was estimated to vary from 44 to 93% when increasing the filler content. Such a high nucleating efficiency has not been reported yet for a nanocomposite with iPP matrix. This result is due to the very good dispersion of the filler in these melt-mixed graphene-based polypropylene systems. The nucleation ability of the graphene filler does not reach a saturation in the concentration range studied. The gap between laboratory and industrial cooling rate scale is here reduced thanks to the information achieved from the fast-cooling experiments. By varying the filler amount in the investigated range, a significant shift of the cooling rate window in which the transition from α-to mesophase dominated crystallization takes place was detected. Notably, with 3.5 wt% graphene platelets, α-phase crystals are predominantly present in the material even after quenching at 1000 °C/s, similar to highly nucleated commercial iPP grades.

Graphene

Polypropylene

Nanocomposites

Processing

Crystallization kinetics

Author

Enrico Carmeli

University of Genoa

Federico di Sacco

University of Groningen

Giuseppe Portale

Dario Cavallo

University of Genoa

Roland Kádár

Chalmers, Industrial and Materials Science, Engineering Materials

Antonis Gitsas

Thomas Gkourmpis

Borealis GmbH

Davide Trachida

Composites Part B: Engineering

1359-8368 (ISSN)

Vol. 247 110287

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VINNOVA (2018-03311), 2018-11-30 -- 2021-02-28.

Graphene enhanced adhesives for spot welding

VINNOVA (2018-01475), 2018-05-15 -- 2019-08-30.

Areas of Advance

Production

Materials Science

Subject Categories

Textile, Rubber and Polymeric Materials

Composite Science and Engineering

DOI

10.1016/j.compositesb.2022.110287

More information

Latest update

10/9/2023