MONO and POLYAMINE FUNCTIONALIZED MWCNTs AS REINFORCEMENT FOR EPOXY RESIN BASED NANOCOMPOSITES

Carbon nanotubes represent nowadays an ideal reinforcing filler due to their very high aspect ratio, an extraordinary mechanical and electrical property. They, employed as reinforcement in epoxy nanocomposites, can widen their application in potential application such as coatings, adhesives, structural materials etc., ranging its application from microelectronics to aerospace. Anyway, the enhancements of the properties due to the insertion of CNTs can be less than the theoretically expected benefits due to the various difficulties of processing, determined by both dispersion degree of filler throughout the composite system and their interfacial adhesion. In order to overcome these difficulties in this paper we studied the effects of functional groups (both mono and poly amine chain) attached on external wall of multiwall carbon nanotubes on the MWCNTs/epoxy nanocomposites. The aim was to verify the role of the functional groups on the properties of the nanocomposites. In order to highlight the features of MWCNTs/epoxy system, mechanical flexural, morphological, calorimetric and electrical measurements were carried out. The effects of the amino functional groups were compared to the neat resin. The results have shown that the most important changes in the properties of the material can be related to an improvement of the dispersion of the filler in the matrix. Furthermore, the increase of the number of amine groups on each single chain lead to an increase of toughness, strength and deformability of the nanocomposites. This behavior was related to an interfacial interaction filler/matrix; an interaction model was proposed and discussed.