Materials Letters 125 (2014) 48–50

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Materials Letters
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/matlet

Electrical and mechanical properties of ABS/EPDM composites filled

with carbon black
F. Wang a, R.Y. Hong a,b,n, W.G. Feng c, D. Badami d, K. Zeng a
a
School of Chemical Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350108, China
b
College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Material Science, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, China
c
Suzhou Nanocomp Inc., Suzhou New District, Suzhou 215011, China
d
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON , Canada, N2L 3G1

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A new way has been devised to modify acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) using maleic anhydride
Received 17 May 2013 (MAH) functionalized ABS and ethylene-propylene-diene rubber (EPDM) as compatibilizer and flex-
Accepted 22 March 2014 ibilizer. The SEM micrographs and electrical analysis reveal that EPDM-g-MAH shows poor compatibility
Available online 29 March 2014
with ABS matrix, but the polymer blends become much more miscible after being compounded with
Keywords: ABS-g-MAH. Carbon black (CB) selectively dispersed in ABS phase increases the concentration of CB in
ABS-g-MAH ABS domain, which dramatically increases electrical conductivity. Moreover, with raw ABS being
Electrical properties massively added into the blends, the mechanical properties are significantly improved while conductiv-
Functional ity is slightly decreased.
Polymeric composites
& 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction It is well-known that with the increasing addition of CB into

Acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) is one of the most impor-
tant synthetic engineering resins, due to excellent properties on
impact resistance, heat resistance, and chemical resistance along
with characteristics of easy to fabricate, stable in finished size and
good surface glossiness. ABS has achieved wide applications in
machinery, vehicles and electric products nowadays.
With the increasing interest in conductive polymer composites,
work of adding conductive fillers into ABS making the blends
antistatic has exploited plenty of potential applications which are
not confined to electrical insulating materials any more. Typical
examples are electromagnetic shielding material, shell of electro-
nic product and commodities desired to be antistatic [1].
Conductive fillers added into ABS usually are CB, carbon fiber
(CF) and carbon nanotube (CNT) etc., though these fillers are
electrically favored, the general performance remains keeping
several defects. For example, CNT is the best in electrical con-
ductivity while the most expensive in price and CB's addition will
be the largest for getting the same conductivity which may
seriously influence the mechanical property.
poly-matrix, the electrical conductivity will increase and even
dramatically increase after reaching the percolation threshold [2].
Though the value of percolation threshold is affected by many
factors [3], the addition of normal conductive CB/CF still occupies
considerable amount in composite [2–4], making it easy to break
off. Many experiments have been conducted to study how to
toughen polymer by mixing another polymer with high toughness.
Hu et al. [5] studied the impact strength of ABS toughened by
polybutadiene, Naficy [6] found the effective parameters influen-
cing modulus of PP/PA6 blends, and many researchers used maleic
anhydride functionalized rubber or plastic as compatibilizer to
reinforce the mechanical performance [7–10].
In this study, we introduced CB as conductive filler and MAH
functionalized ABS and EPDM as compatibilizer and flexibilizer,
respectively, to modify ABS. It is usually the case that the improvement
of one property destroys another, for instance, the increase of
conductivity, the decrease of mechanical properties. To overcome the
problem, we adopted this modification method for the first time,
expecting to get high conductivity while keeping excellent tensile
strength and impact strength.

n
2. Experimental
Corresponding author at: College of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and
Material Science, No. 199, Ren-Ai Street, Suzhou, Jiangsu 215123, China.
Tel./fax: þ 86 512 65882057. Materials: EPDM (Dow Chemical Company), recycled ABS
E-mail address: rhong@suda.edu.cn (R.Y. Hong). (Chi Mei, Zhenjiang) and MAH (Feihuan, Tianjin) were used in

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.matlet.2014.03.136
0167-577X/& 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
 F. Wang et al. / Materials Letters 125 (2014) 48–50 49

this study. Dicumyl peroxide (Lingfeng, Shanghai) was used as
initiator. Normal conductive CB (Qiushi, Tianjing) with average
particle size of 100 nm and specific surface area of 70 m2/g was
directly used without any pretreatment.
Sample preparation: The EPDM-g-MAH sample (EPDM:DCP:
MAH ¼94.8%:0.2%:5%, wt%) was prepared via single screw extru-
der (Delin Plastic Machinery Co. Ltd., Wuxi) at 100 1C and 100 rpm.
ABS was grafted by maleic anhydride [11] (ABS:DCP:MAH ¼
94.8%:0.2%:5%, wt%) in twin-screw counter-rotating internal mixer
(SUYAN Technology Company, Changzhou) at 175 1C and 30 rpm
for 3 min, and then mixed with the as prepared EPDM-g-MAH in
proportion (55%:45%, wt%) sufficiently. Finally, the obtainment
was compounded with/without raw ABS resin in certain CB
addition (15%, wt%) in internal mixer at 50 rpm and 220 1C for
5 min. The final proportions of as prepared samples are listed in
Table 1.
Characterization: Electrical properties of wafer-shape samples with
the size of Φ15  4 mm were measured using an insulating resistance
meter (Dazhan Institute of Electrical and Mechanical Technology,
Nanjing) assisted by four-point probes resistivity measurement (4
points Tech. Guangzhou).
Tensile tests were conducted using universal tester (WDT-20)
at the speed of 50 mm/min after preparing materials to dumbbell
shape via universal sampling machine according to GB/T 1040-92.
Notched IZOD impact test was conducted using XJJ-50 machine
according to GB/T 1043-93. The GB standards were established
according to the ISO ones.
Table 1
Composition of blends corresponding to Fig. 1.
ABS ABS-g-MAH EPDM-g-MAH
Sample 1 85% / /
Sample 2 47% / 38%
Sample 3 65% 11% 9%
Sample 4 / 47% 38%
Morphological observation was carried out via scanning electron
microscopy (S-4700, FE-SEM) at an accelerating voltage of 15 kV. The
specimens were fractured in liquid nitrogen and covered by gold for
observation.
3. Results and discussion
Morphology observation: Fig. 1 shows the SEM images of different
samples listed in Table 1. As seen in Fig. 1(a), CB homogeneously
disperse in ABS matrix in little group of aggregates, forming the
conductive network. The coarse interface indicates the poor
compatibility of CB and ABS. In Fig. 1(b), the bright white parts
surrounded by CB are EPDM-g-MAH. EPDM rubber usually pre-
sents as dispersed phase in composite, due to the incompatibility
with ABS domains, the system is rough and immiscible. CB
selectively dispersed in ABS phase [3,12] increases the concentra-
tion of CB in ABS domain, which enhances the conductive net-
work. Fig. 1(c) shows the morphology of sample 3, we can see from
the picture that the interface is much smoother than those of
samples 1 and 2, which is attributed to the good compatibility and
co-continuity among the three phases. Fig. 1(d) shows the best in
morphology proving the excellent compatibility of ABS-g-MAH
and EPDM-g-MAH.
Electrical analysis: From Fig. 2, the first electrical percolation
concentration of CB in ABS system is about 12% (wt%) and the
second percolating trend [13] seems to appear after 19%. Experi-
ment of 21% CB addition was carried out. The resistivity was
2.1  103 Ω cm, confirming the second percolation. Interestingly,
no obvious percolation values can be seen from other systems. It
might be explained that a feeble conductive network has already
CB been established in that carbon black selectively dispersed in ABS
domains is beneficial for the formation of conductive network [14].
15% When CB concentration exceeds 12%, the resistivity of both ABS/
15%
ABS-g-MAH/EPDM-g-MAH and ABS-g-MAH/EPDM-g-MAH get
15%
15% dramatically decreased, even the ABS/EPDM-g-MAH system gets
more conductive too, confirming the viewpoint that CB’s selective

Fig. 1. SEM photographs of different ABS blends.

50 F. Wang et al. / Materials Letters 125 (2014) 48–50

also an interesting phenomenon of sample 7 at the point where CB

addition is 12%: values of tensile strength and elongation at break
show abnormal increase which goes against the trend that with
the decrease of CB from sample 5 to 8, tensile strength as well as
elongation at break tend to be gradually increased. This abnormal
increase might be due to good co-continuity of composite.

4. Conclusion

We have successfully prepared the ABS conductive composite filled

with CB by using MAH functionalized ABS and EPDM as compatibilizer
and flexibilizer, respectively. The resistivity is dramatically decreased
for 4 orders of magnitudes arriving at 2.5  103 Ω·cm since ABS is
functionalized by MAH at the CB addition of 15% compared to that of
non-functionalized ABS at 7.0  107 Ω·cm. The SEM photographs show
that ABS-g-MAH behaves as an excellent compatibilizer making
EPDM-g-MAH and ABS domains miscible, which improves the tensile
strength, impact strength and elongation at break of composites well
Fig. 2. Resistivity of ABS with/without modification plotted versus CB content. enough compared to the one without adding ABS-g-MAH. Our
experiments and results present encouraging prospect due to the
Table 2
good co-continuity and dramatic reduction in resistivity. However,
Mechanical properties of different ABS blends. mechanical properties especially impact strength still need to be
improved to meet the market [15], which requires further inves-
Sample ABS ABS-g- EPDM-g- Carbon Tensile Impact Elong. tigation.
content MAH MAH black strength strength at
(wt%) content content (wt%) (MPa) (kJ/m2) break
(wt%) (wt%) (%)
Acknowledgments
1 100 – – – 27.42 81.18 2.80
2 85 – – 15 17.89 40.32 2.41
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Founda-
3 – 47 38 15 5.52 179.38 6.91
4 47 – 38 15 17.56 95.03 4.82 tion of China (NSFC, Nos. 21246002 and 20876100), the National Basic
5 63 11 9 17 18.76 30.74 2.08 Research Program of China (973 Program, No. 2009CB219904),
6 65 11 9 15 21.74 44.20 2.94 National Post-doctoral Science Foundation (No. 20090451176), the
7 68 11 9 12 27.37 60.13 5.17 Jiangsu Provincial Key Laboratry of Environmental Materials and
8 71 11 9 9 26.51 67.19 3.56
Environmental Engineering at Yangzhou University (No. K11025),
Technology Innovation Foundation of MOST (No. 11C26223204581),
dispersement in ABS phase increases the CB concentration in Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Prov. (No. BK2011328) and
ABS domain, which dramatically decreases resistivity. It is worth Minjiang Scholarship of Fujian Prov.
mentioning that when concentration of CB surpasses 12%, the ABS/
ABS-g-MAH/EPDM-g-MAH system, in which 68% (wt%) raw ABS References
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