Developed carbon nanotubes/gutta percha nanocomposite films with high stretchability and photo-thermal conversion efficiency

It is necessary to develop novel nanocomposite films for reducing soil pollution caused by the use of petroleum-based materials. In this paper, a simple solvent-cast method was used to fabricate gutta percha films with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by homogeneously dispersing different amount of CNTs (0%, 0.5%, 1%, 1.5% and 2%, wt/%) through gutta percha matrix. The obtained nanocomposite films were characterized by Raman spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Meanwhile, the wettability, mechanical properties, water vapor barrier properties, electromagnetic absorption of films as well as their photo-thermal conversion of the soil were investigated in detail. The results showed that the 1% loading of CNTs film significantly improved the mechanical properties of the nanocomposite films compared to the control: the tensile strength, elongation at break and Young's modulus were increased by 44.0%, 30.5% and 26.1%, respectively. In addition, the CNTs/gutta percha films demonstrated lower thermal stability, glass transition temperature (T-g), melting enthalpy (Delta Hm) crystallinity and water vapor permeability (WVP) than the pristine gutta percha film. Especially, the WVP value of the film with 1% CNTs was the lowest. And finally, the soil warming experiments showed that the 1% CNTs film had the highest 83.73% photo-thermal conversion efficiency, compared to the 18.61% for control. This nanocomposite film has the potential for application in agriculture in arid regions because of its high stretchability and photo-thermal conversion efficiency, which could be potential application in agricultural mulch. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.