Thermal Property Studies of In Situ Blended Graphene/Nature Rubber Nanocomposites
Zhenqiang Dong, Fei Cai, Zuming Jiang, Wanli Xu
Abstract
In this work, graphene/nature rubber (GE/NR) composites with filler content from 0 wt% to 1 wt% were prepared by an in situ reduction process. Thermal properties of the nanocomposites were studied by thermogravimetric (TG) analysis and thermogravimetric difference ( Δ TG). Composites with higher GE content evidenced stronger thermal stability-enhancing effect. Kinetic analysis showed that the activation energies (<mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M1"><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>E</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mtext>a</mml:mtext></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:math>) during degradation of composites were always higher than pure NR. However, <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" id="M2"><mml:msub><mml:mrow><mml:mi>E</mml:mi></mml:mrow><mml:mrow><mml:mtext>a</mml:mtext></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:math> reached its maximum at 0.1 wt% GE content and started to decrease with further increase in GE loading. The changes in the thermal properties were attributed to the chemical structure and heat transfer properties of graphene sheets.