Hossein Behniafar, Mojtaba Yazdi
Polymer Science, Polym Chem 58, 736-744 (2016)
Publication year: 2016
Soft and flexible chains of poly(tetramethylene glycol) (PTMG) were covalently grafted with multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT). FE-SEM images showed that the polyether PTMG formed a surrounding shell around the nanotubes with about 5 nm in thickness. The modified nanotubes (MWCNT-PTMG) were then loaded into an in situ-prepared polyurethane elastomer (PUE) with different loading contents below 1 wt. %. In addition to the modifier of MWCNT, polyether PTMG was also used for preparing the polyurethane matrix. Thermal analyses (TG/DTG and DTA) showed two endothermic phase transitions in associated with the two main thermo-degradations of the resulting PUE nanocomposites. Moreover, DMA technique exhibited an appreciable increase in the Tg values due to a strong interaction between PTMG-modified MWCNT and PTMG-based PUE matrix.