The effect of single walled carbon nanotubes on conductivity and thermal properties of glass fiber reinforced composites

Abstract This paper reports on a comprehensive study of the effect of single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) on the alternating current (AC) conductivity, thermal and morphological properties of the unsaturated polyester based glass fiber reinforced polymer composite (GFRPC). AC conductivity measurements were carried out using the impedance spectrum and thermal measurements were carried out using differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) at a temperature range of 24 °C–900 °C and heating rates of 20 °C min −1 . Impedance results showed that the conductivity behavior in the nanotube-loaded composite laminate obeys a Jonscher-type mechanism. At low frequencies, the conductivity value remains almost constant for the doped material and takes the value of 10 −5 S cm −1 . It is observed that the AC conductivity starts to increase after the critical frequency value of approximately 10 3 Hz and increases up to 10 −2 S cm −1 due to hopping and tunneling mechanisms caused by space charge polarization accumulated in the local regions at high frequencies. The pure material with an insulating nature also exhibited a typical insulating behavior. Thermal testing showed that nanotube reinforcement increases thermal conductivity in three different directions. DSC thermocurves analysis also revealed that the addition of carbon nanotubes increased the glass transition temperature of the material from 180 °C to 190 °C. The scaling and fractal analysis methods were also applied to obtain hetero morphological structure of materials. The fractal analysis results indicated that carbon nanotube doping to the standard sample increases the coating rates, scalability and heterogeneity of the solid phase surface of the sample. The coating rates of composite surfaces were calculated as 45% and 36%, respectively. Morphology analysis revealed that the probability of finding surface particles for the nanotube-doped sample decreased compared to the undoped sample, but the fractal dimension value increased. While this value was 1.83 in the pure sample, it increased to 1.92 in the nanotube material.