Understanding and controlling the development of interfacial zones in polymer/nano-carbon composites is necessary for achieving efficient interfacial stress transfer. This is crucial for producing nano-composite materials with outstanding mechanical properties. This study demonstrates the use of templated crystallization by carbon nanotubes (CNT) to form specific polymer morphologies. Subsequently, by tailoring polymer crystallization conditions in CNT dispersions, interfacial morphologies which exhibit different chain conformations on CNT can be obtained. These conformational changes arise due to nano-scale assembly that is the result of synergistic effects between CNT templating (i.e., epitaxy) and external parameters used to promote either chain extension or folding. This work demonstrates that extended-chain, folded-chain, and amorphous conformations for both polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) systems can be achieved by utilizing the aforementioned techniques (see figure). Crystallization parameters and shearing mechanisms were further tailored to promote fibrillar crystal growth and increase the thickness of the polymer interphase on the CNT. The influence of temperature and degree of undercooling on the structure and morphology of the polymer interphases were also studied. The results of this work show the ability to control atomic- to nano- to meso-scale registry in polymer nano-composites by fundamentally understanding templated crystallization mechanisms. 

Understanding the process-structure relationship for building polymer-CNT interphases

247th National Meeting (2014)

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