Polymer grafted multiwalled carbon nanotubes via facile in situ solution radical polymerisation

A facile strategy to graft polymers onto the surfaces of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) was developed via the free radical addition process in the solution radical polymerisation of styrene in presence of the MWCNTs without any pretreatment so that the length of the original MWCNTs remained unchanged. The polystyrene grafted MWCNTs were characterised with Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and transmission electron microscopy techniques. The effect of the amount of the initiator added and of the polymerising temperature on the percentage of grafting (PG%) and conversion of monomer (C%) were calculated from the TGA results. It was found that the maximum PG% of 15.6% was achieved with 0.5% initiator added and the higher polymerising temperature favoured the grafting polymerisation. The proposed method is expected to be extended to other vinyl monomers and offers another diverse way for the sidewall functionalisation of MWCNT.