High resistivity‐temperature effect of resistivity for economical and facile conductive polymer composites with low percolation threshold via self‐constructed dual continuous structure

Abstract In this work, electrically conductive polyethylene/polypropylene‐flake graphite composites with different ratios (HDPE/PP‐FG) were prepared by simple mechanical blending (Mec) and melt blending (Mel) technologies, combining with the grinding technique. According to the effect of preparation technique, dual continuous microstructures for Mec‐HDPE/PP‐FG composites were self constructed by controlling specific molding temperature. As a result, the percolation threshold of 1.33 wt% of Mec‐HDPE 1 /PP 4 ‐FG was achieved, much lower than that of Mel‐HDPE 1 /PP 4 ‐FG (7.02 wt%) and the maximum in conductivity was over 10 −3 S/m at about FG content of 6 wt%. However, Mel‐HDPE 1 /PP 4 ‐FG only showed the electrical conductivity of about 8.0 × 10 −11 S/m when FG content was 6 wt%. Meanwhile, Mec‐HDPE/PP‐FG composites presented obvious positive temperature coefficient (PTC) effect of electrical resistivity, without negative temperature coefficient (NTC) effect and PTC intensity was up to 6.57 orders of magnitude, far higher than those of Mel‐HDPE/PP‐FG composites. In addition, the excellent repeatability in PTC behaviors for Mec‐HDPE/PP‐FG was achieved after several run cycles. Therefore, the study on economical and facile polymer materials with high performance PTC characteristics had the great significance in practical application.