Conductive Natural Rubber/Carbon Black Nanocomposites via Cellulose Nanowhisker Templated Assembly: Tailored Hierarchical Structure Leading to Synergistic PropertyEnhancements
writer：Xiaodong Wu; Canhui Lu; Xinxing Zhang*; Zehang Zhou
keywords：templated assembly，synergistic property enhancements
source：期刊
specific source：Journal of Materials Chemistry A
Issue time：2015年
The development of novel and versatile strategies to construct conductive polymer composites with low percolation thresholds and high mechanical properties is of great importance. In this work, a simple, facile and effective strategy was developed to fabricate tailored carbon black (CB) based 3D hierarchical conductive structures in a natural rubber (NR) matrix using renewable and biodegradable cellulose nanowhiskers (CNs) as templates. Specifically, needle-like CNs can direct the arrangement of CB nanoparticles along the CNs, yielding nodular CB@CN nanohybrids with excellent suspension stability and high aspect ratios. As a result, CB@CN nanohybrids could be selectively located in the interstitial space between NR latex microspheres and assembled into a continuous 3D hierarchical network via a latex blending technique. This 3D hierarchical conductive structure dramatically enhanced the electrical and mechanical properties of the NR based composites. With the addition of 5 vol% CB, the
electrical conductivity of the composite was significantly enhanced by 12 orders of magnitude and the tensile strength was increased by 760% after the incorporation of the CN templates. Moreover, CB@CNs/NR nanocomposites showed a much lower electrical conductivity percolation threshold (2.9 vol%) than the traditionally prepared CB/NR composites (7.3 vol%). This novel strategy of CN templated fabrication of effective 3D conductive structures in a polymer matrix could significantly promote the functional use of natural cellulose resources and extend the application of CB in the production of conductive composites