Vol.:(0123456789) Polymer Bulletin https://doi.org/10.1007/s00289-019-02979-6 1 3 ORIGINAL PAPER Improved dispersion of carbon black in ABS/PANI blend through its acid functionalization and addition of nanoclay, thereby enhancing mechanical and thermal properties Narayan Debnath 1  · Vinay Panwar 2  · Tushar Roy 2  · Mitali Saha 1  · Kaushik Pal 2 Received: 25 May 2019 / Revised: 27 July 2019 / Accepted: 2 October 2019 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract This work presents a unique type of hybrid composite which shows a signifcant improvement in mechanical and thermal properties than that of its pristine form of fller. The acid functionalization of carbon black and its use as fller in acryloni- trile butadiene styrene (ABS)/polyaniline (PANI) blend have resulted in promising improvement in mechanical and thermal properties. With the acid-functionalized carbon black when used as fller in the same blend with a compatibilizer (nanoclay), the blend exhibits further enhancement in tensile strength, modulus and thermal stability of the composite. Finally, with a good compatibilization using nanoclay (NC), the hybrid composite have shown 58% improvement in tensile strength and improvement in thermal decomposition temperature by around 70 °C. In addition, NC assisted for the transformation of unstable interaction between ABS and PANI to more stable confguration by assisting PANI to homogeneously incorporate to the polymer matrix, thereby increases the degradation onset temperature in TGA, up to 460 °C. * Kaushik Pal pl_kshk@yahoo.co.in 1 Department of Chemistry, National Institute of Technology Agartala, Agartala, Tripura 799046, India 2 Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttarakhand 247667, India