Morphological, Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Chemically Bonded Graphene Oxide Nanocomposites with Biodegradable Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) by Solution Intercalation

Chemically covalent bonded graphene oxide (MGO)/Poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) (PHB) nanocomposites were fabricated successfully through solution blending. Morphological observations indicated that MGO was dispersed well in the nanocomposites during solution intercalation. The mechanical and thermal property characterizations indicated that incorporation of 2.0 wt.% MGO resulted in the increasing of up to 101% and 46% in tensile strength and tensile modulus of nanocomposites, respectively, compared to neat PHB; while the maximum thermal decomposition temperature improved about 15.5 °C higher than that of PHB. Differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) analysis showed that the crystallization process of PHB accelerated, resulting in an increasing in crystallinity with the incorporation of MGO due to its’ “ nucleating effect”. Electrical conductivity analysis indicated that the electrical conductivity of MGO/PHB nanocomposites has increased by 14 orders in comparison to that of pure PHB, especially for r-MGO filled PHB nanocomposites (4 wt.% r-MGO loading). It was concluded that the formation of graphene-graphene network structure in the nanocomposites, the increases in homogeneous dispersion of graphene and interfacial interactions contributed to the enhancements of properties.