"Highly Conductive PDMS/Carbon Nanotube/Graphene Nanocomposites and Effect of Sulfuric Acid Treatment on Conductivity"

TL;DR

This study develops highly conductive PDMS nanocomposites using MWCNTs and GNPs, demonstrating that sulfuric acid treatment significantly enhances their electrical conductivity, reaching up to 1074.9 S/m.

Contribution

It introduces a new PDMS nanocomposite with synergistic CNT and GNP fillers and shows how sulfuric acid treatment improves conductivity.

Findings

Sulfuric acid treatment increases conductivity significantly.

Conductivity achieved up to 1074.9 S/m.

Synergistic effect of CNTs and GNPs enhances conductivity.

Abstract

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is an insulator and it is commonly used in fabrication of micro-structures but there is a need of electrical conductive PDMS. Therefore, this research is mainly focused on producing PDMS nanocomposites with high electrical conductivity. Thus, we produced highly conductive PDMS nanocomposites which were filled with multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs). Due to the synergistic effect between CNTs and GNPs inside a polymeric matrix, we expected to obtain more conductive nanocomposites than PDMS nanocomposite filled with only CNTs. Additionally, we investigated the effect of sulfuric acid treatment to surface composition and electrical conductivity of prepared PDMS/MWCNT/GNP nanocomposites. Results indicated that electrical conductivity of sulfuric acid-treated samples was significantly higher than untreated samples. The level of conductivity in the range of from 270.7 to 1074.9 S/m was obtained, and the higher ones are the samples treated with acid solution.