Effect of MWCNTs surface functionalization on the characterization of PVA/MWCNTs nanocomposites

Abstract The present study aims to put forward the role of surface functionalization of multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) on the enhancement thermal and hydrophilicity properties of new nanocomposite based poly(vinyl alcohol)/surface functionalized MWCNTs (PVA/MWCNTs), prepared by a facile phase inversion process. In this study, the fabrication of PVA/MWCNTs nanocomposites is carried out using functionalized MWCNTs (f-MWCNTs) with different functional groups (–OH, –COOH, –NH 2 ). The structural, morphological, thermal, hydrophilicity and physico-chemical properties of PVA/MWCNTs nanocomposites are characterized by XRD, FE-SEM, FT-IR, TGA and contact angle measurement. The FT-IR results confirm the formation of a hydrogen bond between MWCNTs and PVA chain. XRD analysis indicates an improvement in the crystallinity of the PVA/MWCNTs nanocomposite. TGA results reveal that the PVA/f-MWCNTs nanocomposites show higher thermal stability than pure PVA. It is revealed that PVA/MWCNTs nanocomposites based functionalized MWCNTs remarkably increase the degradation temperature, and thus enhancing the thermal properties. The highest weight loss (30.7 wt%) and degradation temperature (520 °C) values are obtained with PVA/f-MWCNTs(0.5 wt%). The contact angle measurement confirms that the hydrophobic properties of pure PVA became hydrophilic because of the functional groups of MWCNTs. The hydrophilicity of PVA/MWCNTs nanocomposites is increased with the increase in wt% of MWCNTs embedded in the nanocomposite.