Influence of manufacturing process on electrical properties of LDPE-GnP nanocomposites

In this report electrical properties of the nanocomposite samples, prepared from graphene nanoplatelet (GnP) loaded low density polyethylene (LDPE) by extrusion and compression molding, were examined in order to elucidate the impacts of the nanoplatelets size and material’s manufacturing process. It is shown that the extrusion forces a strong anisotropy in material’s morphology. The graphene nanoplatelets become aligned along the flow direction. As compared to pure LDPE, a significant reductions of the through-plane low field electric conductivity is found in such samples. On the other hand, the samples produced by press molding exhibit slightly higher level of electric conductivity, which is connected to their less aligned microstructure and filler dispersion. For comparison results of measurements on LDPE-graphene monolayer sandwiches are also presented