Nanostructural characteristics and electrical conductivity of copper nanoparticles-polypropylene nanocomposites for bipolar plate application

The current research is aimed at obtaining suitable nanocomposites for bipolar plate application in fuel cell, which fulfill the requirement for electrical and mechanical properties and low production cost. For this purpose, copper nanoparticles (Cu-NPs) were embedded in polypropylene matrix through wet-chemistry technique with the presence of polypropylene-grafted maleic anhydride as the coupling agent. The resulting nanocomposites were characterized with UV-Vis spectroscopy, TEM, SEM, TGA and electrical conductivity measurement. It was found that the addition of Cu-NPs up to 1.50 wt% has improved effect on the electrical conductivity up to 14.43 S/cm. However, further increase of Cu-NPs loading to 2.00 wt% adversely reduced the electrical conductivity down to 9.31 S/cm, as a consequence of severe agglomeration and large pores formation.