Rheological studies play an important role in polymer processing including fiber spinning. In the current work, rheological behavior has been studied for polyacrylonitrile (PAN)/carbon nanotube (CNT) dispersions in dimethyl formamide (DMF), where CNT loading is as high as 15 wtpercent-flag-change of the total solids (polymer CNT). The presence of CNTs increased the elastic-like and shear thinning behavior of the dispersions. The terminal slope of the log Gampersand-flag-changeprime; versus log Gampersand-flag-changePrime; curve, which was used to characterize the homogeneity of solution or dispersion, is dependent on the CNT concentration but independent of temperature between 0 and 60 ampersand-flag-changedeg;C. PAN/CNT-10 (90 wtpercent-flag-change PAN 10 wtpercent-flag-change CNT) and PAN/CNT-15 were gel spun at different conditions, with small diameter capillary at high shear rate and large diameter capillary at relatively low shear rate. For PAN/CNT-10, fiber spinning with lower molecular weight polymer showed increased continuous jetting time when compared to spinning with higher molecular weight polymer. In addition, the rheological behavior of PAN/cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) dispersion with 20-60 wtpercent-flag-change CNC was also compared to that of the PAN/CNT dispersions. PAN/CNC and PAN/CNT share similarities in both rheological behavior and fiber spinning at high filler loading.
