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 mu m-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 mu m-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. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.