Investigation of thermal properties of polycarbonate nanocomposites

Abstract

Polycarbonate (PC) is a thermoplastic polymer applicable in various fields such as electrical, electronics, construction, automobile, marine and aerospace. Polycarbonate is preferred by material scientist and industrialists because of its excellent mechanical and thermal properties. However, it has some limitations like low resistance to scratch, brittle when exposed to UV radiation reduce its usage for a specific applications. In this investigation, Polycarbonate was melt blended with ceria nanoparticles using twin screw extruder and the polycarbonate-ceria nanocomposites was prepared by varying the ceria (CeO2) content from 0.5 2 wt% and the thermal and mechanical properties were studied using the thermogravimetric analysis, dynamic mechanical analysis, differential scanning calorimetry, tensile analysis and impact analysis. The morphology of the fractured samples was analyzed by the scanning electron microscopy. The thermal analysis resulted that the PC containing 0.5 wt% CeO2 improved the damping property of the composite and PC containing 1 wt% CeO2 enhanced the thermal and mechanical properties of the composites. An optimum quantity of 0.5 wt% CeO2 nanoparticles was chosen based on the integrated performance of the composite and prepared PC-0.5 wt% CeO2 composites and involved into further study like thermal degradation and life time estimation of the composite for the high temperature applications. The thermal degradation study concluded that the an Avrami-Erofeev reaction model of f(and#945;) = 3(1-and#945;)[-ln(1-and#945;)]2/3 and g(and#945;) = [-ln(1-and#945;)]1/3 was chosen as the best fit to describe the thermal degradation mechanism of PC and PC-0.5 wt% CeO2 composites and the life time estimation of PC and PC-0.5 wt% CeO2 displays that the composite met the demand to applicable in the electronic industries newline