Mechanical And Physical Properties Of Cellulose Nanocrystal / Graphene Nanoplatelets Hybrid Nanofillers Reinforced Polylactic Acid Biocomposites

Cellulose Nanocrystal (CNC) / Graphene Nanoplatelets (GNP) has high potential to be used as reinforcement due to their biodegradable and eco-friendly potential and also their mechanical and physical properties improvement on the PLA composites. In this research, CNC and GNP as hybrid nanofillers reinforced polylactic acid (PLA) biocomposites have been successfully fabricated using compression moulding technique. It was to study the effect of CNC and GNP hybrid nanofillers on mechanical and physical properties of the PLA biocomposites. The Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) was performed to observe the functional groups and chemical properties of PLA, PLA/CNC, PLA/GNP and PLA/CNC/GNP biocomposites. Then, the mechanical properties (tensile and flexural test) were determined by using Universal testing machine (UTM). This study also observed the density and water adsorption properties of the PLA hybrid biocomposites to reveal the physical properties. The result showed that the addition of CNC and GNP have impact on the mechanical properties of the biocomposites and improve its tensile and flexural properties. Overall, the mechanical properties of the PLA hybrid composites improved with the addition of CNC and GNP as hybrid nanofillers. PLC2.5G2.5 sample is the best sample because it shows a lot of improvement in terms of flexural modulus and flexural strength with 76% and 47% improvement, respectively. For the water adsorption test, it can be observed the PLA biocomposites with CNC (PLC5) has the highest value of water uptake. The presence of the maximum loading of GNP in PLA (PLG5) has shown the highest density with 1.2666 g/cm3.
Keywords: Cellulose Nanocrystal, Graphene Nanoplatelets, Polylactic Acid, Mechanical Properties, Physical Properties.