Preparation and Characterization of Polypropylene/functionalized Graphene Nanocomposites

1. General Introduction Conductive polymer composite materials deserve interest in several application fields [1]. A composite consisting of conductive fillers and an insulating polymer becomes electrically conductive as the filler content exceeds a certain critical value, which is generally attributed to percolation phenomenon. These percolation threshold values for the particular polymer composites can be drastically reduced by using nano-sized conductive fillers such as carbon nanotubes, carbon nanofibers etc. Recently, two dimensional structures based on carbon such as graphene has received significant attention owing to their astonishing electronic, thermal and mechanical properties [3-5]. Owing to a high aspect ratio, outstanding electrical conductivity and cost efficiency, graphene can act as effective conductive filler in polymer as compared to carbon nanotubes. Till date several researches have been carried out based on graphene/polymer composites using graphene as nanofiller [6-10]. In the present report, we have attempted to functionalize the graphene by introducing amine groups and studied its influence on the properties of the polypropylene nanocomposites.