Thermoplastic polyurethane-carbon black compounds: Structure, electrical conductivity and sensing of liquids

Thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) copolymers are interesting host matrices for the incorporation of conductive carbon black (CB) particles. The two-phase character of the TPU systems provides an opportunity for the CB particles to distribute nonuniformly within the phases, owing to their different characteristics. Thus, in spite of its highly polar nature, the TPU/CB system percolates at a relatively low CB content. The CB presence affects the TPU two-phase structure, resulting in a large change of its low temperature loss modulus. CB-containing extruded filaments produced by a capillary rheometer at various shear rates were studied as sensing materials for different alcohols. All filaments displayed an increase in resistance upon exposure to various alcohols. Filaments exposed to methanol exhibited the highest sensitivity. This behavior was related to the sorption kinetics by the TPU/CB compound, which is affected by the different characteristics of the solvents. The resistance of filaments exposed to ethanol or methanol tended to reversibility during the drying cycle, returning to the initial values. The relatively rapid recovery to the filaments' initial resistance values (for methanol and ethanol) suggests that the structural changes due to solvent sorption mainly occur in the outer skin regions of the extruded filaments, whereas the core region remains essentially intact.