Authors:Kavita Deshmukh, Maithili Bhakare, Samyukta Shrivastav, Vaishnavi Naik, Swamini Chopra, C.L. Gogte, D.R. Peshwe
Abstract: The present work focuses on the study of improving the self-healing phenomenon of TPU reinforced with small amounts of MWCNTs. The selfhealing aliphatic TPU was reinforced with 1.3 mg of MWCNTs and the samples were exposed to UV radiation to accelerate the self-healing process. A decrease in crystallite size and increase in crystallinity of TPU is observed after addition of CNTs. Improved physical inter-locking between TPU and CNTs was confirmed thermo-gravimetric analysis. This indicates significant decrease in the thermal degradation tendency of TPU-CNT thin film. Remarkable changes in the morphology of scratch after CNT addition was observed, thus, indicating enhanced healing on UV exposure. The TPU-CNT gets heated rapidly resulting in the diffusion of TPU chains at the broken interface and their re-entanglement in order to heal the crack, where CNT’s act as bridging medium. Thus, it can be said here that during healing process CNT acts as an effective heat-transfer unit when interacting with the matrix.
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