Electrical Properties Characterization of Vinyl ester Resin Filled with carbon Nanotubes

Abstract

In this paper the authors have done a characterization of the electrical properties of vinyl ester based nanocomposites containing different percentages of carbon nanomaterials The carbon fillers used in this study were single wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) and multi-wall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). Three weight percentages (0.10, 0.15 and 0.20) of each type of carbon nanotubes used as filler were added into the thermoset polymer matrix of vinyl-ester, resulting six nanocomposite materials. The electrical properties were measured with TeraOhm 5 kV tester for all six composite materials along with neat vinyl ester resin. The experimental results show that, by the addition of multi-wall carbon nanotubes filler to the vinyl-ester matrix, the electrical properties of the nanocomposite material thus obtained were significantly improved. The electrical percolation threshold concentration for multiwall carbon nanotubes based vinyl ester nanocomposite was 0.20 wt.%.