Microstructure and Electrical Conductivity of CNTs/PMMA Nanocomposite Foams Foaming by Supercritical Carbon Dioxide

The carbon nanotubes（CNTs）/polymethylmethacrylate（PMMA）nanocomposite foams were prepared by the anti-solvent precipitation and supercriticalfoaming method.The morphology and the electricalconductivity of the foams with different kinds of CNTs were investigated.The experimentalresults showed that allthe foams had uniform cellstructure,and the cellsize changed from 1.9 to 10 μm when the foaming temperature ranged from 50 ℃ to 95 ℃.With smallcellsize（1.9-4.0 μm）,the conductivities of the foams were 3.34×10~（-6）-4.16×10~（-6） S/cm compared with the solid matrix since the introduction of micro cells did not destroy the conductive network.However,when the cellsize was biger（4.5-10 μm）,the aspect ratio of the CNTs played the dominant role of the conductivity.The foams with short CNTs had higher conductivity,since the short CNTs were hard to stretch and snap by the cells and can well-dispersed in the cellwalland celledges.The results of this work provided a novelmaterialdesign method for conductive foams based on the rule of both microstructure and aspect ratio of the CNTs.