Effects of carbon nanotube on the thermal, mechanical, and electrical properties of PLA/CNT printed parts in the FDM process

By Leipeng Yang, Shujuan Li, Xing Zhou, Jia Liu, Yan Li, Mingshun Yang, Qilong Yuan, Zhang Wei. Synthetic metals, 2019

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Abstract In this work, a filament based on polylactic acid (PLA)/ carbon nanotube (CNT) composites was prepared for the fused deposition modeling (FDM) process. The effects of the CNT content on the crystallization-melting behavior and melt flow rate (MFR) were tested to research the printability of the PLA/CNT. The results demonstrate that the CNT content has a significant influence on the mechanical properties and conductivity properties. The addition of 6 wt% CNT produced a 64.12% increase in tensile strength and a 29.29% increase in flexural strength. The electrical resistivity varied from approximately 1 × 1012 Ω/sq to 1 × 102 Ω/sq for CNT contents ranging from 0 wt% to 8 wt%. In addition, this paper assesses the effect of the filling velocity, liquefier temperature and layer thickness on the electrical resistivity. A lower filling velocity, higher liquefier temperature and greater layer thickness should be selected to achieve excellent electrical conductivity. These results demonstrate that PLA/CNT composites are a promising functionalizing material for FDM.

Subfields: Automotive Engineering, Biomaterials, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/89b2f515d29f50bfad8d6524c9088df2722bf8e8