Performance improvement of carbon fiber‐reinforced ABS composites by introducing fullerene nanoparticles

Abstract Recently, polymer composites have been extensively researched in industrial fields such as electrical conductance, ohmic heating, electromagnetic shielding and electrostatic discharge, particularly in engineering polymers reinforced with carbonaceous additions. Herein, fullerene (C60) and short carbon fiber ( CF ) were incorporated with acrylonitrile–butadiene–styrene copolymer (ABS) using melt‐compounding followed by an injection‐molding process. Composite samples were produced with contents of 20 wt% of CF besides 0.1, 0.5 and 1.0 wt% of C60. Tensile, impact, hardness and wear tests, conductive atomic force microscopy, dynamic mechanical analysis, thermogravimetric analysis, melt flow index tests and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were performed to characterize mechanical, electrical, thermomechanical, thermal, melt‐flow and structural behaviors of ABS‐based composites involving CF and C60. Based on the mechanical test findings obtained for the developed composites, comprising tensile and impact test results, C60 additions contributed to a significant rise in tensile strength and impact resistance of CF ‐reinforced ABS composites, with a 20% increase in tensile resistance being achieved by introduction C60 into the ABS/ CF structure. C60 addition enhanced efficiency by 50% in terms of tensile modulus. Electrical conductivity measurements confirmed that C60 nanoparticles and CF exhibited a synergy. The optimum synergistic ratio of C60/ CF was obtained as 0.5/20. The conductive path in the ABS/ CF composite system was established by incorporating C60 with different loading amounts. SEM micrographs of composites demonstrated that C60 nanoparticles were dispersed homogeneously into the ABS matrix involving lower amounts of C60. © 2025 The Author(s). Polymer International published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.