Highly filled bamboo charcoal powder reinforced ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene

A dry-blending technique and extrusion method was used to produce highly filled (normally filler content is less than 50 wt%) and relatively cheap bamboo charcoal powder/ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene composites. The results show that the tensile strength significantly increased from 18.7 to 61.2 MPa. It is obvious that while increasing charcoal concentration resulted in increased storage modulus, E' reaches 18.6 GPa at bamboo charcoal powder content of 80 wt% at 25 °C. Furthermore, the value of E' remains higher (E' was about 3.3 GPa) for composites (bamboo charcoal powder content of 80 wt%) until around 120 °C. The strain values at 80 °C are reduced by 95.9%, 96.9% and 97.1% compared to neat UHMWPE when the contents of bamboo charcoal are 60 wt%, 70 wt% and 80 wt%, respectively. The composites show lower tanδ values than those of the neat UHMWPE in the glass-transition temperature (Tg); this indicates that the viscoelastic energy dissipated less in the composites than in the neat polymer in the glass-transition region.