Supplementary Information

Mechanical and thermal behaviours of graphite flake reinforced acrylonitrile butadiene styrene composites and their correlation with entanglement density, adhesion, reinforcement and

C factor

Alok Kumar Pandey1, Ravindra Kumar1, Vashu Singh Kachhavah1 and Kamal K. Kar1, 2*

1Advanced Nanoengineering Materials Laboratory, Materials Science Programme, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur-208016, India.

2Advanced Nanoengineering Materials Laboratory, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur-208016, India.

*Corresponding Author (Email:kamalkk@iitk.ac.in, Fax: +91-5122597408, Phone:+91-5122597687)

Fig. S1. Schematic of DMTA; (a) ABS polymer in absence of heat (dotted lines represents weak

interaction among chains), (b) ABS polymer reinforced with GF, restriction in the movement of

polymeric chains in absence of heat (dotted lines represents weak interaction among polymeric

Electronic Supplementary Material (ESI) for RSC Advances.This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2016

chains and GF) (c) random movement of ABS polymeric segments on application of heat, and (d)

the reinforced GF applied restriction in the movement of chains during applied heat.

0 10 20 30 40

0.15

0.30

0.45

0.60

0.75

0.90

Loss

mod

ulus

(GPa

)

Graphite flake content (vol%)

-80 C -30 C 30 C 80 C

Fig. S2. Variation in loss modulus for 0 to 40 vol% of GF reinforced ABS/GF composites at four

different temperatures.

-100 -50 0 50 100 150

0.0

0.7

1.4

2.1

2.8

110 115 120 125 1300.9

1.8

2.7

tan

Temperature (C)

ABS 1GF 3GF 6GF 9GF 12GF 20GF 30GF 40GF

tan

Temperature (C)

Fig. S3. Damping factor vs. temperature for 0 to 40 vol% of GF reinforced ABS/GF composites

(inset shows the enlarged view of tan δ peaks).

0 30 60 90 120 150 180600

720

840

960

1080

Mel

t vis

cosi

ty (P

a.s)

Processing time (s)

ABS 1GF 3GF 6GF 9GF 12GF 20GF 30GF 40GF

Fig. S4. Variation in melt viscosity with processing time for different ABS/GF compositions.

Fig. S5. Fractured surfaces of the composites having (a) 1, (b) 3, (c) 6, (d) 9, (e) 12 and, (f) 30

vol% GF reinforced ABS composites.

0 10 20 30 40

76

78

80

82

84

Hardness Density

Graphite flake content (vol%)

Hard

ness

(Sho

re D

)

1.02

1.08

1.14

1.20

1.26

Dens

ity (g

/cm

3 )

Fig. S6. Shore-D hardness and bulk density of ABS/GF composites having 0 to 40 vol% GF.