Nonisothermal crystallization of isotactic polypropylene in carbon nanotube networks

Abstract

Isotactic polypropylene (iPP) composites with carbon nanotube (CNT) networks at relatively high loadings could have various applications such as electromagnetic interference shielding and thermal conductivity. The crystallization behavior of iPP inside CNT networks could be very much related to the above properties, which was found to be quite different from that of neat iPP in this work. In CNT networks, CNTs not only act as effective heterogeneous nucleating agents to noticeably increase the onset temperature (more than 18°C) of iPP crystallization but also bring strong confinement on the mobility of iPP chains and then reduce the overall crystallization rate of iPP matrix. It is interesting to find that CNT networks, especially in the case of ultrahigh loading (90 wt%), have remarkable confinement effect on crystallization of iPP, overcoming the heterogeneous nucleation of CNTs, resulting in a decline of crystallization rate of iPP. The nonisothermal crystallization kinetics of iPP in the dense CNT network quite fits to the modified Avrami mode by Jeziorny, even more satisfactorily than the case of neat iPP. When confinement effect is dominated during crystallization, we found that the perfection and size of crystallites are extremely decreased at ultrahigh loading, leading to a very low melting point of iPP (approximately 140°C).