Composites of Vegetable Oil-Based Polymers and Carbon Nanomaterials

Owed to current environmental concerns and crude oil price fluctuations, the design of feasible substitutes to petroleum-based polymeric materials is a major challenge. A lot of effort has been focused on transforming natural vegetable oils (VOs), which are inexpensive, abundant, and sustainable, into polymeric materials. Different nanofillers have been combined with these bio-based polymer matrices to improve their thermal, mechanical, and antibacterial properties. The development of multifunctional nanocomposites materials facilitates their application in novel areas such as sensors, medical devices, coatings, paints, adhesives, food packaging, and other industrial appliances. In this work, a brief description of current literature on polymeric nanocomposites from vegetable oils reinforced with carbon nanomaterials is provided, in terms of preparation, and properties. Different strategies to improve the nanomaterial state of dispersion within the biopolymer matrix are discussed, and a correlation between structure and properties is given. In particular, the mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties of these natural polymers can be considerably enhanced through the addition of small quantities of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), graphene (G), or its derivatives such as graphene oxide (GO) or fullerenes (C60). Finally, some current and potential future applications of these materials in diverse fields are briefly discussed.