LAUSR

Abstract Graphene oxide (GO) reinforced polyamide 6 (PA 6) composites are promising lightweight materials for engineering applications. However, the industrial development of GO/PA 6 composites has been severely impeded by the complicated preparation process and undesirable dispersion of GO in PA 6. In this work, an economical and time costless “coagulation-assisted” tactic was proposed to implement the batch preparation of GO/PA 6 composites with uniform dispersion of GO and superior comprehensive performances simultaneously. The tensile test indicated that GO/PA 6 composites showed higher tensile strength (66.31 MPa) and Young’s modulus (1.17 GPa) values than pristine PA 6 (40.81 MPa and 0.46 GPa, respectively) even at very low GO loading (0.6 wt%). Furthermore, better thermal stability of GO/PA 6 composites was obtained, the onset and maximum thermal degradation temperature of GO/PA 6 composites maximally increased by 5.21 and 12.38 °C, respectively. Additionally, GO were confirmed to induce the nucleation of crystallization of PA 6 as heterogeneous nucleus and promote the formation of α1-form crystals in PA 6. More significantly, this “coagulation-assisted” tactic can also be employed in other nanofiller reinforced polymer composites for a wide variety of applications.