Development and characterization of polypropylene or polyamide 6 hybrid composites filled with magnetite and silicon carbide

Abstract

Polymers, which are becoming widespread day by day and find use in almost every domestic and industrial sectors, have many advantageous properties, on the other hand, their use in areas where thermal conductivity needed is limited due to their low thermal conductivity. To overcome this problem, the requirement for composite materials with high thermal conductivity is increasing and studies on this subject are becoming widespread. In this context, it is known that the thermal conductivity values of the polymer composite structure can be improved by adding fillers to the polymer structures that will augment the thermal conductivity. In this study, to improve the thermal conductivity of polypropylene (PP) and polyamide 6 (PA6), hybrid composites of PP or PA6, separately, filled with silicon carbide (SiC) and magnetite (Fe₃O₄) were prepared. For this purpose, PP/SiC/Fe₃O₄ and PA6/SiC/Fe₃O₄ composites were produced in 1:1 filler ratio with different filler contents (5, 10 and 20% by wts) by extrusion method and shaped by compression molding to determine the optimum amount of additives. Afterward, thermal conductivity, electrical conductivity, mechanical, molecular spectroscopic, and microstructure analyses were carried out for the characterization of all composites. When the study results were examined, it was seen that the PP/SiC/Fe₃O₄ composite structure containing the highest filler ratio of 20% (by wt) improved by 26% and a thermal conductivity value with a higher enhancement of 38% was obtained for PA6/SiC/Fe₃O₄ composite prepared at the same filler content compared to neat polymers.

Graphical abstract