Chemical Engineering Journal, Vol.209, 20-27, 2012
Preparing conductive poly(lactic acid) (PLA) with poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) functionalized graphene (PFG) by admicellar polymerization
We synthesized conductive poly(lactic acid) (PLA) polymer by spiking PLA matrices with poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA)-functionalized graphene (PFG) by virtue of admicellar polymerization. The PFG was prepared by admicellar polymerization of methyl methacrylate monomers adsorbed onto the graphite oxide. The electrical conductivity of the prepared PFG/PLA considerably increases up to 2.58 x 10(-4) S/cm with the percentage of PFG under experimented conditions, similar to 12 orders of magnitude greater than the PLA. Aside from electrical conductivity, the tensile strength and Young's modulus of the PFG/PLA also exhibit increases of similar to 5 MPa (similar to 10%) and similar to 0.7GPa (>80%) after the 5 wt.% addition of the PFG, respectively. Moreover, with the aid of transmission electron microscopy (TEM), it is clear that the graphene surface is covered by the PMMA films rather than usual discrete nanospheres. Our method may offer an alternative green procedure to synthesize conductive PLA polymer since the materials used in the experiments are bio-degradable and environment-begin. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:Graphene nanosheets;Admicellar polymerization;Biodegradable;Conductive PLA;Functionalized graphene