An innovative method to improve the electrical conductivity of multi-walled carbon nanotubes filled polyamide 6/polystyrene blends

An innovative method has been successfully developed to improve the electrical conductivity of polyamide 6/polystyrene (PA6/PS) blends in this paper. PA6/PS blends containing multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) are prepared by the radical polymerization of styrene in the presence of є-caprolactam (CL) and MWCNTs, followed by the in-situ anionic ring-opening polymerization of CL. In the resulted PA6/PS blends, MWCNTs are selectively located at the interface of PA6 and PS. Because the interface of 0.5 and 1.0 wt.% MWCNTs filled blends with PA6/PS weight ratio of 70/30 is continuous, a MWCNTs conductive pathway is formed in these two blends, which results in a decrease of volume resistivity by about 9 orders of magnitude.