Preventing interfacial slip in carbon nanotube polycarbonate composites

Several recent studies have shown that interfacial slip at the nanotube-matrix interfaces in carbon nanotube polymer composites can give rise to significant dissipation of energy causing the material structural damping to increase. This effect can be used to efficiently inject damping into composite and heterogeneous structures. However if the interfacial slip of nanotube additives can be prevented, then significant enhancement in stiffness and strength is possible. To inhibit interfacial slippage of nanotubes we established covalent bonds at the nanotube-matrix interfaces by using an epoxidation procedure. The resultant nano-composites are shown to be resistant to interfacial slip and exhibited a higher storage modulus and a lower loss modulus compared to the baseline composite (without nanotube epoxidation). These results indicate that functionalizing nanotubes to establish direct covalent linkages is an effective way to engineer structural components with enhanced mechanical properties.