In spite of the high electrical conductivity of carbon nanotube (CNT), its tendency to aggregate and expensive cost in fabricating aerogel, foams, and porous materials remains a problem. Therefore, we described a simple and feasible way to design light-weight, high electrically conductive, and cost-efficient polylactic acid (PLA)/CNT foams. The branched PLA (BPLA) resin with excellent melt elasticity and foamability was induced by nucleophilic ring-opening reaction of epoxy-based acrylic/styrene copolymer and PLA. After that, BPLA/CNT composites and foams were prepared by melt-mixing and supercritical carbon dioxide foaming technology, respectively. The thermal, electrical, and foaming properties were studied. The resultant BPLA/CNT foam possessed a low density of 0.174 g/cm 3 and high crystallinity of 3.03%. An improvement of the oriented structure of CNT induced by cell growth in BPLA matrix increased the conductivity of the foam up to 3.51 × 10 4 Ω/m. The proposed foaming materials provided a way for designing and preparing high performance CNT products.

中文翻译：

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导电轻质支化聚乳酸基碳纳米管泡沫

尽管碳纳米管（CNT）具有高电导率，但在制造气凝胶，泡沫和多孔材料时，其聚集的趋势和昂贵的成本仍然是一个问题。因此，我们描述了一种设计轻质，高导电性和成本效益的聚乳酸（PLA）/ CNT泡沫的简单可行的方法。通过环氧基丙烯酸/苯乙烯共聚物与PLA的亲核开环反应，可得到具有优异的熔体弹性和发泡性的支化PLA（BPLA）树脂。之后，分别通过熔融混合和超临界二氧化碳发泡技术制备了BPLA / CNT复合材料和泡沫。研究了热，电和发泡性能。所得的BPLA / CNT泡沫具有0.174g / cm 3的低密度和3.03％的高结晶度。由BPLA基质中的细胞生长引起的CNT定向结构的改善将泡沫的电导率提高到3.51×10 4Ω/ m。所提出的发泡材料提供了一种设计和制备高性能CNT产品的方法。