Largely Improved Tensile Properties of Chitosan Film via Unique Synergistic Reinforcing Effect of Carbon Nanotube and Clay

In this work, a great synergistic effect of 2D clay platelets and 1D carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on reinforcing chitosan matrix has been observed for the first time. With incorporation of 3 wt % clay and 0.4 wt % CNTs, the tensile strength and Young's modulus of the nanocomposites are significantly improved by about 171 and 124%, respectively, compared with neat chitosan. This could be understood as due to the formation of much jammed fillers network with 1D CNTs and 2D clay platelets combined together, as indicated by rheological measurement. Our work demonstrates a good example for the preparation of high performance polymer nanocomposites by using nanofillers of different dimension together.