Enhancement of Fracture Toughness of Epoxy Nanocomposites by Combining Nanotubes and Nanosheets as Fillers

• Main Authors: Nadiim Domun, Keith R. Paton, Homayoun Hadavinia, Toby Sainsbury, Tao Zhang, Hibaaq Mohamud
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2017-10-01
• Series: Materials
• Subjects: epoxy; carbon nanotube; boron nitride nanotube; graphene; boron nitride nanosheet; hybrid nanocomposite; fracture toughness
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1944/10/10/1179

In this work the fracture toughness of epoxy resin has been improved through the addition of low loading of single part and hybrid nanofiller materials. Functionalised multi-walled carbon nanotubes (f-MWCNTs) was used as single filler, increased the critical strain energy release rate, GIC, by 57% compared to the neat epoxy, at only 0.1 wt% filler content. Importantly, no degradation in the tensile or thermal properties of the nanocomposite was observed compared to the neat epoxy. When two-dimensional boron nitride nanosheets (BNNS) were added along with the one-dimensional f-MWCNTs, the fracture toughness increased further to 71.6% higher than that of the neat epoxy. Interestingly, when functionalised graphene nanoplatelets (f-GNPs) and boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) were used as hybrid filler, the fracture toughness of neat epoxy is improved by 91.9%. In neither of these hybrid filler systems the tensile properties were degraded, but the thermal properties of the nanocomposites containing boron nitride materials deteriorated slightly.