2023 AIChE Annual Meeting
Development of Poly(arylene ether sulfone) Based Mxene Composite Material with Enhanced Mechanical Properties
MXenes are highly favorable 2D structures with a layered thickness of ~1 nm with high electric conductivity rates and thermal properties. Thin films of MXenes are flexible which allows these materials to be good candidates for nanofillers in polymer composites. Modeling the composites can predictively illustrate the effect of different loading concentrations and the interaction of nanofiller with the polymer matrix on mechanical properties. In this research, the effect MXene concentration on the thermal and mechanical properties UDEL P-3500 composite membranes were studied. Composite modeling was used to correlate MXene quantity on UDEL mechanical changes with two loadings of MXene were investigated: UM1 indicating 1 w/v% MXene loading and UM2 2w/v% MXene loading. Visible color changes were observed with increasing MXene concentration. ATR-FTIR analysis showed a mixture of the MXene and UDEL peaks rather than forming new functional groups. The pure MXene powder exhibited stretching vibrations at 1600 cm-1 for the C=O, and 3600 cm-1 while both MXene composites and the MXene powder exhibited peaks around 600 cm-1, indicating the presence of C-Br bonds due to halogenated etching. Raman Spectroscopy exhibited two distinct sharp peaks related to MXene powder that are expected: A1g(Ti, O, C) around 200 cmâ1 and A1g(C) around 720 cmâ1. TGA analysis showed the addition of MXenes into the UDEL matrix increased the UDEL thermal deflection temperature from its expected temperature of 174 °C to closer to the expected degradation of MXene flakes. SEM imaging clearly shows the preservation of the layered Ti3C2Br2 MXene structure after inclusion into the UDEL matrix indicates no damage to layers upon incorporation into the polymer. Modeling studies showed that the mechanical properties of MXene/UDEL composites can be significantly improved by aligning the MXene inclusion, in which maximum MXene loading was found to be 19.99 vol% for the random case and 45.03 vol% for the aligned case.