Conductive Plastics from Al Platelets in a PBT-PET Polyester Blend Having Co-Continuous Morphology

Abdullah Alhamidi; Arfat Anis; Saeed M Al-Zahrani; Zahir Bashir; Maher M Alrashed

doi:10.3390/polym14061092

Conductive Plastics from Al Platelets in a PBT-PET Polyester Blend Having Co-Continuous Morphology

Polymers (Basel). 2022 Mar 9;14(6):1092. doi: 10.3390/polym14061092.

Authors

Abdullah Alhamidi¹, Arfat Anis¹, Saeed M Al-Zahrani¹, Zahir Bashir¹, Maher M Alrashed¹

Affiliation

¹ SABIC Polymer Research Center (SPRC), Chemical Engineering Department, King Saud University, P.O. Box 800, Riyadh 11421, Saudi Arabia.

Abstract

Conductive plastics are made by placing conductive fillers in polymer matrices. It is known that a conductive filler in a binary polymer blend with a co-continuous morphology is more effective than in a single polymer, because it aids the formation of a 'segregated conductive network'. We embedded a relatively low-cost conductive filler, aluminium nano platelets, in a 60/40 PBT/PET polymer blend. While 25 vol.% of the Al nanoplatelets when placed in a single polymer (PET) gave a material with the resistivity of an insulator (10¹⁴ Ωcm), the same Al nano platelets in the 60/40 PBT/PET blend reduced the resistivity to 7.2 × 10⁷ Ωcm, which is in the category of an electrostatic charge dissipation material. While PET tends to give amorphous articles, the 60/40 PBT/PET blends crystallised in the time scale of the injection moulding and hence the conductive articles had dimensional stability above the T_g of PET.

Keywords: PET/PBT blend; conductive plastics; mechanical properties; metal–plastics; reinforced polymer composite.