Synthetize And Characteristic Carbon Nanotube/Poly Liquid Crystal Composites

CNTs were discovered by S.Iijima from observing by HRTEM on the year 1991. CNTs are now the ideal additive of nanocomposites because of its unique structure, excellent mechanical and photoelectric properties.Up to now, much more researches are focused on the preparation and property of CNTs based nanocomposites. This paper summarized the preparation, purification,practical application of CNTs and do some work for this.In this paper, we prepared a liquid crystalline poly-ester. And by in-situ polymerization method, a series of thermotropic liquid crystalline polyester nanocomposites with different concentration of CNTs were prepared. The liquid crystalline properties were measured by fourier transform infrared spectrum (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV spectrum, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).The FT-IR showed the exact structure of the poly-ester. The XRD characterization revealed that the introduction of CNTs in poly-ester did not affect the nematic type. The SEM showed that the CNTs were seen to be very well dispersed in the polymer matrix and CNTs were aligned along the liquid crystalline director. DSC data revealed that the thermal stability of the poly-ester was improved by adding a small amount of CNTs, and the adding of CNTs also could increased the melt transition temperature and isotropic transition temperature of the poly-ester.