Mechanical properties and crystallization behaviors of nanostructured-Zno/PET in-situ composites

In this paper, the mechanical properties and the crystallization behaviors of nano-ZnO particle reinforced PET (ZnO/PET) composite were investigated in order to verify the possibility of industrial application of ZnO/PET. The addition of nano-ZnO particle (nZnOp) improves the tensile strength and elongation of PET, which reach their maximums at 2 wt% nZnOp addition. The enhancement of tensile properties of ZnO/PET composite indicates the improvement in the crystallinity of PET because of the constancy in molecular weight of PET with and without nZnOp addition. Whereas the impact strength of PET decreases with the nZnO, addition, except the nZnOp addition around 2 wt%, at which the highest value has been achieved among the pure PET and composites. And according to the DSC and XRD results, 2 wt% ZnO/PET composite has the highest crystallinity and among pure PET and composites. Furthermore, by combining both DSC and XRD results, the nZnOp addition was found effective in increasing the crystallinity of PET matrix as well as possibly capable of changing the crystallization form of PET. 2 wt% ZnO/PET composite could be a promising upgrade of PET due to the considerable improvement in mechanical properties.