Mechanical and Thermal Properties of Electrospun PMIA Nanofibers Reinforced PLA Composites

Abstract

The well-aligned electrospun Poly (mphenylene isophthalamide)(PMIA) nanofibers reinforced Polylactic acid (PLA) composites is fabricated via hot-pressing. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differential scanning calorimeter/thermal gravimetric analyser (DSC-TGA) and Dynamic Mechnical Analysis (DMA) are used to characterize morphologies of the broken sections and properties of composites. The results show that the tensile breaking strength and initial modulus have been enhanced much compared to that of pure PLA. The remarkable improvement emerges at the load 38 wt.% of nanofibers with the tensile strength and initial modulus increase by ca. 235 % and ca. 149 %, respectively. The hot-press process did not damage the nanofibers figuration and there are appear cracks link together with nanofibers by increasing the nanofiber contents. The initial degradation temperature of nanofibers reinforced composites are lower than that of pure PLA, but the final residual rate of composites increases with the increase of nanofibers mass fraction. Both the storage modulus and loss modulus of the composites increased with the addition of PMIA nanofibers. The addition of 38 wt.% of nanofibers yields an increase of the storage modulus ca. 11 % and the loss modulus ca. 13 % at 40 °C.