The effect of nano-zirconia on the morphology and mechanical properties of PVDF/PAN membrane as separators in super capacitors
by Wang Lina; Lou Huiqing; Liu Wentao; Zong Dingding
International Journal of Nanomanufacturing (IJNM), Vol. 15, No. 1/2, 2019

Abstract: The PVDF/PAN/ZrO₂ (zirconia) composite fibrous membranes were fabricated by electrospinning. The effects of ZrO₂ content on solution properties, mechanical properties and crystallisation behaviours as well as related morphology were systematically evaluated. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to investigate the effect of ZrO₂ content on the morphology of PVDF/PAN/ZrO₂ composite fibrous membranes, which showed that the diameter is only 0.8 μm when the ZrO₂ is 0.4%. It could be attributed to the enhancement of solution conductivity by ZrO₂ addition. Nitrogen adsorption based on Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET) principle was employed to measure the specific surface area, which indicated that the specific surface area increased about 1.8 times for composite membranes compared to the PVDF/PAN membrane when the ZrO₂ content was 0.4%. The tensile strength of fibrous membranes increased from 2.74 of pure PVDF/PAN to 5.11 MPa of PVDF/PAN/ZrO₂ when the ZrO₂ content was 0.4%. The differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) results showed that the crystallinity and orientation enhanced with increasing of ZrO₂, which was beneficial to improve the tensile strength. The T_g and T_c shifted to high temperature with ZrO₂ increases, which demonstrated that ZrO₂ promoted the heterogeneous nucleation and formed perfect crystal structure.

Online publication date: Mon, 07-Jan-2019

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