Preparation and Mechanical Properties of PAN/HNTs Composite Nanofibers

The enhanced composite nanofibers have attracted great attention for application in recent years. The electrospinning technique was considered to be a prospective production pattern for them. This paper provided a promising technique to prepare the polyacrylonitrile (PAN)/halloysite nanotube (HNT) composite nanofibers by using the electrospinning method. The PAN/HNTs composite nanofibers with well enhanced performance were successfully fabricated from a mixture of PAN/DMF/HNTs dispersion solution processed by the electrospinning technique. For achieving good dispersion in PAN polymer, the highly dispersed HNTs were obtained by using polycarboxylate modification employing the in-situ spray-drying method. The structure and properties of the composite nanofibers were characterized by TEM, XRD, EDX, IR, and DSC techniques. The obtained PAN/HNTs composite nanofibers with different HNTs contents were about 300-500 nm in diameter. In addition, the mechanical properties of PAN/HNTs composite nanofibers were tested, which exhibited an excellently enhanced performance.