Piezoresistive behavior of Epoxy/MWCNTs nanocomposites thin films for strain sensing application

In this present work, the influence of processing paremeters such as sonication time and curring time on the electromechanical properties of thin films based thermosetting polymer known as Epoxy filled with untreated multiwalled carbon nanotube (CNTs) were investigated systematically. For this reason, a predefined CNT content (0.3 wt.%) was directly mixed with epoxy at different sonication time i.e. (20, 25, 30 and 35 min) and differnt curring time i.e. (3 and 5 hours). Experimental results show that these processing parameters have an inversal effect on the electrical and mechanical behavior. It was found that, the films made based on nanocomposite sonicated for 30 min and curried for 5 hours had the highest conductivity. On the other side, under a cyclic loading, thin films show higher sensitivity in compression and especially sample has a high sensitivity in both tension and compression.