Morphological, rheological and electrical study of PLA reinforced with carbon-based fillers for 3D printing applications

Three dimensional printing (3DP) is a technique that, assisted by a computer-aided design (CAD), allows fast, direct and accurate fabrication of composites with complex 3D features and a broad range of sizes. However, poor mechanical stability and the impossibility to print electrically conductive objects remain critical problems to be solved because of the thermoplastic polymer used with a 3D printer based on fused-deposition modeling (FDM). In the present work, in order to overcome such limitations, the use of polylactic acid (PLA) reinforced with two types of highly conductive nano-carbon fillers, i.e. multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) and graphene nanoplates (GNPs) as a novel materials for 3D printing is proposed. In particular, a morphological, rheological and electrical characterization is carried out to support their potential applicability.