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Polymers
Special Issues
Functional Cellular Polymer Composites
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Functional Cellular Polymer Composites

A special issue of Polymers (ISSN 2073-4360). This special issue belongs to the section "Polymer Applications".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 June 2023) | Viewed by 3402

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. José Ignacio Velasco

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Guest Editor
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Poly2 Group, Technical University of Catalonia (UPC BarcelonaTech), ESEIAAT, C/Colom 11, 08222 Terrassa, Spain
Interests: polymers; composites; foams; nanocomposites
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Marcelo Antunes

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Guest Editor
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Poly2 Group, Technical University of Catalonia (UPC BarcelonaTech), ESEIAAT, C/Colom 11, 08222 Terrassa, Spain
Interests: additives; aerogels; composites; conductivity; extrusion; films; foaming; foams; foils; fracture; graphene; ignifugation; membranes; molding; nanocomposites; nanoparticles; oxides; permeability; polyfunctional materials; polymers; processing; properties; resistance; silicates; structure; supercritical fluid
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Hooman Abbasi

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Guest Editor
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Poly2 Group, Technical University of Catalonia (UPC BarcelonaTech), ESEIAAT, C/Colom 11, 08222 Terrassa, Spain
Interests: graphene; carbon nanotubes; foams; conductive composites; EMI shielding; multifunctional materials; nanocomposites

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The past decade has seen a growing interest in the application of functional cellular polymer composites in cutting-edge industry sectors. This interest is thanks to their advantages, such as light weight, low cost, high specific mechanical properties and versatility. The ongoing research pursuing the improvement of design and process and well as their characteristic properties provides the possibility of developing advanced cellular materials for emerging technologies related to energy, electronics, telecommunication, aerospace, etc. These materials have demonstrated improved specific mechanical properties with additional functional characteristics given by complex compositions and structures, mainly by the use of well-dispersed nanoparticles throughout the solid phase of the cellular material.

Nanofillers such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs), graphene (monolayer/bilayer graphene, graphene nanoplatelets (GnPs), graphene oxide (GO), reduced graphene oxide (rGO)), hexagonal boron nitride nanoparticles (h-BNNPs) and silicon carbide nanoparticles (SCNs), nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC), etc. have been extensively employed to reinforce polymeric composites due to their high aspect ratio and the ability to tune specific properties. Their use coupled with cellular structure can deliver multifunctional nanocomposite foams as a solution to a variety of limitations in high-end technologies.

Moreover, polymeric foam composites can provide multifunctional properties such as biocompatibility and antibacterial effect, electrical and thermal conductivity, self-cleaning, healing and damage detection and energy storage ability, among many others. The development and understanding of these novel materials would assist in combating upcoming shortcomings in the energy sector, environmental recovery, medical instruments and space exploration.

Therefore, this Special Issue will focus on the recent findings in the field of materials science and technology regarding functional cellular polymer composite materials and all their aspects: design and fabrication, process, composition, morphological structure, characterization, application and functionalization, environmental impact and recycling, etc. 

Prof. Dr. José Ignacio Velasco
Prof. Dr. Marcelo Antunes
Prof. Dr. Hooman Abbasi
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Polymers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • multifunctional composites
  • cellular composites
  • polymeric foams
  • nanocomposite foams

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

8 pages, 1403 KiB  
Article
Sound Absorption Improvement in Porous Ferroelectret Polyethylene with Effective Piezoelectric Mechanism
by Yasmin Mohamed Yousry, Eleftherios Christos Statharas, Kui Yao, Ayman Mahmoud Mohamed, Poh Chong Lim and Francis Eng Hock Tay
Polymers 2022, 14(22), 4843; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/polym14224843 - 10 Nov 2022
Viewed by 1336
Abstract
Airborne sound absorption in porous materials involves complex mechanisms of converting mechanical acoustic energy into heat. In this work, the effective piezoelectric properties of polyethylene ferroelectret foams on sound absorption were investigated by comparable samples with and without the piezoelectric response. Corona poling [...] Read more.
Airborne sound absorption in porous materials involves complex mechanisms of converting mechanical acoustic energy into heat. In this work, the effective piezoelectric properties of polyethylene ferroelectret foams on sound absorption were investigated by comparable samples with and without the piezoelectric response. Corona poling and thermal annealing treatments were applied to the samples in order to enable and remove the piezoelectric property, respectively, while the microstructure and the mechanical properties remained substantially unchanged. The effective piezoelectric properties and airborne sound absorption coefficients of the polyethylene foam samples before and after material treatments were measured and analyzed. Our experimental results and theoretical analysis showed that the open-cell ferroelectret polymer foam with an effective piezoelectric property provides an additional electromechanical energy conversion mechanism to enhance the airborne acoustic absorption performance. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Functional Cellular Polymer Composites)
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13 pages, 9143 KiB  
Article
Processing Effects on the Through-Plane Electrical Conductivities and Tensile Strengths of Microcellular-Injection-Molded Polypropylene Composites with Carbon Fibers
by Shia-Chung Chen, Ming-Yuan Jien, Chi-Chuan Hsu, Shyh-Shin Hwang and Ching-Te Feng
Polymers 2022, 14(16), 3251; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/polym14163251 - 10 Aug 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1355
Abstract
Polymers reinforced with conducting fibers to achieve electrical conductivity have attracted remarkable attention in several engineering applications, and injection molding provides a cost-effective way for mass production. However, the electrical performance usually varies with the molding conditions. Moreover, high added content of conducting [...] Read more.
Polymers reinforced with conducting fibers to achieve electrical conductivity have attracted remarkable attention in several engineering applications, and injection molding provides a cost-effective way for mass production. However, the electrical performance usually varies with the molding conditions. Moreover, high added content of conducting fibers usually results in molding difficulties. In this study, we propose using microcellular (MuCell) injection molding for polypropylene (PP)/carbon fiber (CF, 20, and 30 wt%) composites and hope that the MuCell injection molding process can improve both electrical and mechanical performance as compared with conventional injection molded (CIM) parts under the same CF content. Both molding techniques were also employed with and without gas counter pressure (GCP), and the overall fiber orientation, through-plane electrical conductivity (TPEC), and tensile strength (TS) of the composites were characterized. Based on the various processing technologies, the results can be described in four aspects: (1) Compared with CIM, microcellular foaming significantly influenced the fiber orientation, and the TPECs of the samples with 20 and 30 wt% CF were 18–78 and 5–8 times higher than those of the corresponding samples molded by CIM, respectively; (2) when GCP was employed in the CIM process, the TPEC of the samples with 20 and 30 wt% CF increased by 3 and 2 times, respectively. Similar results were obtained in the case of microcellular injection molding—the TPEC of the 20 and 30 wt% composites increased by 7–74 and 18–32 times, respectively; (3) although microcellular injection molding alone (i.e., without GCP) showed the greatest influence on the randomness of the fiber orientation and the TPEC, the TS of the samples was the lowest due to the uncontrollable foaming cell size and cell size uniformity; (4) in contrast, when GCP was employed in the microcellular foaming process, high TS was obtained, and the TPEC was significantly enhanced. The high foaming quality owing to the GCP implementation improved the randomness of fiber orientation, as well as the electrical and mechanical properties of the composites. Generally speaking, microcellular injection combined with gas counter pressure does provide a promising way to achieve high electrical and mechanical performance for carbon-fiber-added polypropylene composites. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Functional Cellular Polymer Composites)
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