Effect of hollow glass microsphere (HGM) on the dispersion state of single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT)

Single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) loaded polypropylene (PP) based syntactic foam is fabricated by melt mixing method. In order to evaluate the effect of hollow glass microsphere (HGM) on the dispersion state of SWNT and to identify the optimal weight of HGM, various analysis is performed. Based on the comprehensive result analysis, it is concluded that HGMs weight between 1 and 7 wt% shows the best performance. At low weight of HGMs (0.1-0.5 wt%), HGMs act as nucleating agent to escalate the agglomeration of SWNT, while high load of HGMs tend to aggregate each other, hindering the formation of SWNT percolation network.