Preparation of high performance conductive polymer fibres from double percolated structure

Abstract

In our work, efforts have been made to build conductive networks with carbon nanotubes in highly oriented polymer fibres/tapes. It is often reported as a complicated or expensive procedure. Herein, a simple but efficient method is demonstrated for the fabrication of high performance conductive polymer fibres/tapes. To achieve this, carbon nanotubes were selectively dispersed in the polyethylene (PE) phase of a PE/polypropylene (PP) blend to construct conductive networks from a double percolated structure. It was demonstrated that the conductive network could be preserved even at high draw ratio by tailoring the double percolated structure (the blend composition and amount of carbon nanotubes), and a maximum conductivity of 2 S m⁻¹ and strength of 174 MPa has been achieved. Furthermore, subsequent thermal annealing was shown to recover the conductive network and cracks after annealing. It is interesting to note that such a double percolated conductive fibre/tape could be used for self-healing purposes. Therefore, this study provides a guideline for the fabrication of multi-functional high performance conductive polymer fibres/tapes. Finally, a kinetic model was used to study the relaxation process of highly oriented conductive networks during annealing.