Using dilute spouting for fabrication of highly filled metal-polymer composite materials

This contribution deals with a spouted bed process used for combining of particles and a polymer matrix in order to fabricate highly filled composite materials. The questions how a spouted bed can be used for processing of μm-sized particles and how the apparatus for this aim looks like will be addressed, as well as the flow regime of fine particles will be described. Regarding the mechanical properties of fabricated composite materials the key requirement for the granulation procedure in spouted bed is the continuity of the polymer layers deposited on particles. To evaluate this property electrically conducting copper particles and measurements of electrical resistivity of assembled composite materials were used. The resistivity of produced composite materials rises by up to 15 orders of magnitude in comparison to the compacted pure copper particles. The material remains an insulator up to a very high filling degree of about 74 vol.% of copper. The results show an outstanding capacity of a spouted bed for deposition of uniform thin coating layers on μm-sized particles. Further increase of filling degrees leads to a strong degradation of both the electrical resistivity and mechanical properties of composite, such as strength and elastic modulus.

Subjects

Dilute spouting

Electrical conductivity

Fine particles

Granulation

Metal-polymer composites

Spouted bed

DDC Class

600: Technik

620: Ingenieurwissenschaften

More Funding Information

Financial support from the German Research Foundation (DFG) via SFB 986 “M3”, projects A3 and A6.

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Using dilute spouting for fabrication of highly filled metal-polymer composite materials