Origin of mechanical modifications in poly (ether ether ketone)/carbon nanotube composite

Ekaterina Pavlenko (1) , François Boyer (2) , Pascal Puech (1) , Philippe Olivier (2) , Andrei Sapelkin (3) , Stephen King (4) , Richard Heenan (4) , François Pons (5) , Bénédicte Gauthier (5) , Pierre-Henri Cadaux (5) , Wolfgang Bacsa (1)

1 CEMES - Centre d'élaboration de matériaux et d'études structurales
2 UT3 - Université Toulouse III - Paul Sabatier
3 School of Physics and Astronomy [London]
4 ISIS - ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
5 Airbus [France]

Variations in the hardness of a poly (ether ether ketone) beam electrically modified with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT, 0.5%-3%) are investigated. It is shown that both rupture and hardness variations correlate with the changes in carbon nanotube concentration when using micro indentation and extended Raman imaging. Statistical analysis of the relative spectral intensities in the Raman image is used to estimate local tube concentration and polymer crystallinity. We show that the histogram of the Raman D band across the image provides information about the amount of MWCNTs and the dispersion of MWCNTs in the composite. We speculate that we have observed a local modification of the ordering between pure and modified polymer. This is partially supported by small angle neutron scattering measurements, which indicate that the agglomeration state of the MWCNTs is the same at the concentrations studied.

Mots clés: Physical properties; Physics; Hardness variation; Micro indentation; Modified polymer; Nanotube composites; Nanotube concentration; Polymer crystallinity; Small-angle neutron scattering measurements; Spectral intensity; Hardness

Domaines: Mécanique des matériaux [physics.class-ph]

Ekaterina Pavlenko, François Boyer, Pascal Puech, Philippe Olivier, Andrei Sapelkin, et al.. Origin of mechanical modifications in poly (ether ether ketone)/carbon nanotube composite. Journal of Applied Physics, 2014, 115 (23), pp.234901. ⟨10.1063/1.4883299⟩. ⟨hal-01756989⟩