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Processing Effects on the Through-Plane Electrical Conductivities and Tensile Strengths of Microcellular-Injection-Molded Polypropylene Composites with Carbon Fibers

Polymers reinforced with conducting fibers to achieve electrical conductivity have attracted remarkable attention in several engineering applications, and injection molding provides a cost-effective way for mass production. However, the electrical performance usually varies with the molding conditio...

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Autores principales: Chen, Shia-Chung, Jien, Ming-Yuan, Hsu, Chi-Chuan, Hwang, Shyh-Shin, Feng, Ching-Te
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9414686/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36015508
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym14163251
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author Chen, Shia-Chung
Jien, Ming-Yuan
Hsu, Chi-Chuan
Hwang, Shyh-Shin
Feng, Ching-Te
author_facet Chen, Shia-Chung
Jien, Ming-Yuan
Hsu, Chi-Chuan
Hwang, Shyh-Shin
Feng, Ching-Te
author_sort Chen, Shia-Chung
collection PubMed
description Polymers reinforced with conducting fibers to achieve electrical conductivity have attracted remarkable attention in several engineering applications, and injection molding provides a cost-effective way for mass production. However, the electrical performance usually varies with the molding conditions. Moreover, high added content of conducting fibers usually results in molding difficulties. In this study, we propose using microcellular (MuCell) injection molding for polypropylene (PP)/carbon fiber (CF, 20, and 30 wt%) composites and hope that the MuCell injection molding process can improve both electrical and mechanical performance as compared with conventional injection molded (CIM) parts under the same CF content. Both molding techniques were also employed with and without gas counter pressure (GCP), and the overall fiber orientation, through-plane electrical conductivity (TPEC), and tensile strength (TS) of the composites were characterized. Based on the various processing technologies, the results can be described in four aspects: (1) Compared with CIM, microcellular foaming significantly influenced the fiber orientation, and the TPECs of the samples with 20 and 30 wt% CF were 18–78 and 5–8 times higher than those of the corresponding samples molded by CIM, respectively; (2) when GCP was employed in the CIM process, the TPEC of the samples with 20 and 30 wt% CF increased by 3 and 2 times, respectively. Similar results were obtained in the case of microcellular injection molding—the TPEC of the 20 and 30 wt% composites increased by 7–74 and 18–32 times, respectively; (3) although microcellular injection molding alone (i.e., without GCP) showed the greatest influence on the randomness of the fiber orientation and the TPEC, the TS of the samples was the lowest due to the uncontrollable foaming cell size and cell size uniformity; (4) in contrast, when GCP was employed in the microcellular foaming process, high TS was obtained, and the TPEC was significantly enhanced. The high foaming quality owing to the GCP implementation improved the randomness of fiber orientation, as well as the electrical and mechanical properties of the composites. Generally speaking, microcellular injection combined with gas counter pressure does provide a promising way to achieve high electrical and mechanical performance for carbon-fiber-added polypropylene composites.
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spelling pubmed-94146862022-08-27 Processing Effects on the Through-Plane Electrical Conductivities and Tensile Strengths of Microcellular-Injection-Molded Polypropylene Composites with Carbon Fibers Chen, Shia-Chung Jien, Ming-Yuan Hsu, Chi-Chuan Hwang, Shyh-Shin Feng, Ching-Te Polymers (Basel) Article Polymers reinforced with conducting fibers to achieve electrical conductivity have attracted remarkable attention in several engineering applications, and injection molding provides a cost-effective way for mass production. However, the electrical performance usually varies with the molding conditions. Moreover, high added content of conducting fibers usually results in molding difficulties. In this study, we propose using microcellular (MuCell) injection molding for polypropylene (PP)/carbon fiber (CF, 20, and 30 wt%) composites and hope that the MuCell injection molding process can improve both electrical and mechanical performance as compared with conventional injection molded (CIM) parts under the same CF content. Both molding techniques were also employed with and without gas counter pressure (GCP), and the overall fiber orientation, through-plane electrical conductivity (TPEC), and tensile strength (TS) of the composites were characterized. Based on the various processing technologies, the results can be described in four aspects: (1) Compared with CIM, microcellular foaming significantly influenced the fiber orientation, and the TPECs of the samples with 20 and 30 wt% CF were 18–78 and 5–8 times higher than those of the corresponding samples molded by CIM, respectively; (2) when GCP was employed in the CIM process, the TPEC of the samples with 20 and 30 wt% CF increased by 3 and 2 times, respectively. Similar results were obtained in the case of microcellular injection molding—the TPEC of the 20 and 30 wt% composites increased by 7–74 and 18–32 times, respectively; (3) although microcellular injection molding alone (i.e., without GCP) showed the greatest influence on the randomness of the fiber orientation and the TPEC, the TS of the samples was the lowest due to the uncontrollable foaming cell size and cell size uniformity; (4) in contrast, when GCP was employed in the microcellular foaming process, high TS was obtained, and the TPEC was significantly enhanced. The high foaming quality owing to the GCP implementation improved the randomness of fiber orientation, as well as the electrical and mechanical properties of the composites. Generally speaking, microcellular injection combined with gas counter pressure does provide a promising way to achieve high electrical and mechanical performance for carbon-fiber-added polypropylene composites. MDPI 2022-08-10 /pmc/articles/PMC9414686/ /pubmed/36015508 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym14163251 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Chen, Shia-Chung
Jien, Ming-Yuan
Hsu, Chi-Chuan
Hwang, Shyh-Shin
Feng, Ching-Te
Processing Effects on the Through-Plane Electrical Conductivities and Tensile Strengths of Microcellular-Injection-Molded Polypropylene Composites with Carbon Fibers
title Processing Effects on the Through-Plane Electrical Conductivities and Tensile Strengths of Microcellular-Injection-Molded Polypropylene Composites with Carbon Fibers
title_full Processing Effects on the Through-Plane Electrical Conductivities and Tensile Strengths of Microcellular-Injection-Molded Polypropylene Composites with Carbon Fibers
title_fullStr Processing Effects on the Through-Plane Electrical Conductivities and Tensile Strengths of Microcellular-Injection-Molded Polypropylene Composites with Carbon Fibers
title_full_unstemmed Processing Effects on the Through-Plane Electrical Conductivities and Tensile Strengths of Microcellular-Injection-Molded Polypropylene Composites with Carbon Fibers
title_short Processing Effects on the Through-Plane Electrical Conductivities and Tensile Strengths of Microcellular-Injection-Molded Polypropylene Composites with Carbon Fibers
title_sort processing effects on the through-plane electrical conductivities and tensile strengths of microcellular-injection-molded polypropylene composites with carbon fibers
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9414686/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36015508
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/polym14163251
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