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Continuous Production of Polycarbonate-Carbon Nanotube Composites

One of the main obstacles in current research in polymer carbon nanotube composites is the high price of carbon nanotubes and thus their availability in large quantities. This critically limits the range of techniques that can be used to prepare the composites. As such, the development of methods for their continuous production in small quantities can bring great benefit to the research in this area. The present text describes an investigation on the continuous, laboratory-scale, production of polymer/carbon nanotube composites by extrusion. The objective of the study was not only to make new materials, but also, through appropriate design, to enable the scaling-up of the production technique. Multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) were made by chemical vapour deposition of acetylene on alumina supported transition metal catalysts. Composites were then produced in a purpose built micro-extruder and characterized at the nano- and macroscopic scales. It was found that important processing parameters of the current micro-extruder were comparable to those of industrial extruders. Thus, it can be anticipated that the quality of composites produced with it will be comparable to that of composites of the same system produced in large-scale equipments.