Fabrication of exfoliated graphene-based polypropylene nanocomposites with enhanced mechanical and thermal properties

We created the polypropylene (PP)/exfoliated graphene nanocomposites via melt-blending by first coating graphene sheets with PP latex. Compared with neat PP, a ∼75% increase in yield strength and a ∼74% increase in the Young's modulus are achieved by addition of only 0.42 vol% of graphene sheets due to the effective external load transfer.