Study On Preparation And Mechanical/thermal Properties Of MWNTs/MMT/EP Nanocomposites

For the excellent overall performance, cured epoxy resin is widely used in a lot of aspects of industrial production and daily life. However, it is not perfect material, due to the cured epoxy resin caused by its brittleness and lower heat level of the shortcomings limit its application in the field of high-performance, therefore how to improve performance of epoxy resin has become a problem. CNTs is considered as one of the most promising reinforcement materials in the 21 st Century because of its unique structure and excellent performance. The MMT is also has a very wide range of applications, it is called universal material. People have done a lot of work on this two kinds of reinforcing materials modifying epoxy resin, respectively. However, using both CNTs and MMT modifying epoxy resin is seldom reported.In this paper, the MWNTs was modified by mixed acid, bisphenol-A type epoxy resin and Silane coupling agent KH560, we obtained C-MWNTs, EMWNTs and Si-MWNTs. The MMT was modified by Octadecyl trimethyl ammonium chloride. The MMT/EP, MWNTs/EP and MWNTs/MMT/EP three kinds of nanocomposites were prepared by mixing solution method. Using FT-IR to test MWNTs and MMT. The dispersion of before and after the functionalized MWNTs in water were characterized by scanning electron microscopy(SEM). The three kinds of samples of the relevant mechanical and thermal performance were tested and the synergistic toughening mechanism of MWNTs and MMT to epoxy resins were analyzed.The results show that: the functionalized MWNTs have a great impact on the mechanical properties of MWNTs/MMT/EP nanocomposites, but the effect on the thermal performance is very little, Si-MWNTs is more useful to improve mechanical and thermal properties of epoxy resin. When the MWNTs content is 0.7 wt%, the MMT content is 4 wt%, the impact strength of C-MWNTs/MMT/EP, E-MWNTs/MMT/EP and Si-MWNTs/MMT/EP increase by 111.1 %, 127.8 % and 134.7 % than the pure EP, increasing by 80.9 %, 95.2 % and 101.2 % than the MMT/EP; The bending strength of C-MWNTs/MMT/EP, EMWNTs/MMT/EP and Si-MWNTs/MMT/EP increase by 46.9 %, 52.8 % and 54.1 % than the pure EP, increasing by 15.2 %, 19.8 % and 20.8 % than the MMT/EP; The thermal decomposition temperature of MWNTs/MMT/EP nanocomposites increase equally 20 ? than pure epoxy resin; The martin heat resistance temperature of three kinds of nanocomposites increase by 9.1 ?, 10.7 ? and 11.2 ? than pure epoxy resin. The scanning electronic microscope observations show that the synergistic toughening mechanism of MWNTs and MMT for epoxy resin have their own characteristics.