Improving the gas barrier properties of Fe3O4/graphite nanoplatelet reinforced nanocomposites by a low magnetic field induced alignment

The aim of the paper is to develop a novel nanocomposite with high gas barrier property for linerless composite tanks. The permeability is reduced by aligning, the Fe3O4/graphite nanoplatelets (GNPs) into a highly oriented manner in epoxy resin (EP) via a low magnetic field. Fe3O4 nanoparticles were tethered onto the surface of GNPs by the wet-chemical coprecipitation method, and the modified magnetic graphite nanoplatelets (m-GNPs) were added into epoxy resin and aligned in a low magnetic field (40 mT). A method was presented to estimate the minimum magnetic field strength for aligning the m-GNPs. Besides, the morphology and microstructures of the fabricated m-GNPs and m-GNPs/EP highly ordered nanocomposites were characterized. Finally, the helium permeability measurements were performed. The experiments results showed that this method was proved very efficient to align m-GNPs embedded in polymer matrix leading to a highly ordered composite with remarkable gas barrier properties.