57. Growth of Carbon Nanotubes on Clay: Unique Nanostructured Filler for High-Performance Polymer Nanocomposites. W.D. Zhang*, I.Y. Phang, T.X. Liu*. Adv. Mater. 18(1), 73-77, 2006.
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been grown on the Fe-modified montmorillonite (clay) by chemical vapor deposition and the as-prepared CNTs-clay hybrid, without any further purification, was directly incorporated into nylon-6 (PA6) by melt-blending. The intercalation of the clay by Fe2O3 was further delaminated to well-separated nanoclay platelets by the growth of CNTs on them, thus forming a three-dimensional (3D) hybrid nanostructure with combination of a 2D clay platelet with several 1D nanotubes. The CNTs-clay hybrid nanostructured fillers have been observed to homogeneously disperse throughout the matrix by scanning and transmission electron microscopy (SEM and TEM) and the synergic enhancement effect from the hybrid fillers on the mechanical properties of the nanocomposites is significant. Compared with neat PA6, the tensile modulus and strength of the composite are greatly improved by about 290 % and 150 %, respectively, with incorporating only 1 wt.-% CNTs-clay hybrid fillers.