ETD

• ABS
• aspect ratio
• composites
• graphene
• LLDPE
• polymers

The present work focused on the study of the mechanical and gas barrier properties of graphene based polymer composites produced by a scalable process. In particular, the first part of this thesis regards the production and characterization of graphene flakes with different aspect ratio exploiting a large scale production method, i.e. the wet-jet mill (WJM) technique. In the second part, graphene flakes have been incorporated in acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) and lineal low density polyethylene (LLDPE) matrices employing three different methods, i.e. laboratory scale, semi scalable and scalable, in order to investigate the effect of different production processes on the composites properties. Moreover, the influence of graphene flakes aspect ratio on the tensile and gas barrier properties of the composites has been investigated.