Preparation and properties of high electrical conductivity elastomer from alcoholysis product of waste plastic

ABSTRACT

Transforming alcoholysis products of PET to elastomers and hydrogels is a promising research field that contributes to slowing down the pace of global warming. The products transformed from plastics can be applied in various fields. For example, electrically conductive elastomers can be sensors and other circuit parts. However, the electrically conductive elastomers that have already been developed are mostly composite materials built up from more than one matter. This work aims to look for a way to transform waste PET plastic into copolymer electrically conductive elastomers. Thus, this kind of material is promising in the reutilization of PET plastics and the field of wearable devices. Specifically, the main method uses polycaprolactone diol (M_n = 530) to alcoholyse PET and LiTSFI to confer the elastomers with conductivity. The resulting product exhibited good electrical conductivity up to 7.051S/cm², low thermal diffusivity down to 0.112 mm²/s, excellent thermal stability that can be stable up to 260°C, and moderate light transmittance.

KEYWORDS:

• Alcoholysis
• electrically conductive elastomers
• polyurethane elastomers
• reutilization
• waste PET

Acknowledgments

Thanks for the opportunity given by The Beijing Youth Top Talent Training Program; Thanks Professor Xingmei Lu from IPE (Institute of Process Engineering), CAS (Chinese Academy of Science) for her professional instructions and support from the beginning to the end of the project. The data of the thesis are all from my experiments carried out by myself, and the thesis is fully fulfilled on my own. I sincerely thank all the people who gave help and encouragement during the research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Beijing Outstanding Young Talents.