The Effect of Graphite on the Water Uptake, Mechanical Properties, Morphology, and EMI Shielding Effectiveness of HOPE/Bamboo flour composites

This goal of this work was to study the effect of graphite on the water uptake, mechanical properties, morphology, and electromagnetic interference shielding effectiveness (EMI SE) of HDPE/Bamboo flour composites using the material mechanical testing machine, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and EMI shielding apparatus. The water uptake of the composites was improved by graphite. Compared with the neat HDPE/bamboo composites, the flexural strength of the graphite-filled composites showed a small decrease, but the flexural modulus was enhanced greatly, indicating that graphite could effectively elevate the stiffness of the composites. An obvious result was that the toughness of composites was improved considerably by the graphite. The notched impact strength of the composites was increased from 5.18 to 9.0 KJ/m(2) as graphite content was increased from 0 to 40 %. A large amount of graphite would increase the conductivity property and the EMI SE. The HDPE/bamboo composite with 40% of graphite exhibited electrical resistivity of 31.2 Omega.cm and the EMI SE of 20 dB in the frequency range of 30 - 3000 MHz.