One of the most important directions in the development of additive manufacturing or three-dimensional (3D) printing technologies is the creation of functional materials, which allow not only prototyping but also the manufacturing of products with functional properties. In this paper, poly-lactide acid (PLA) /carbon black (CB) composites with segregated (ordered) structure have been created. Computer simulation based on the Mamunya geometrical model showed that the CB content within φ = 2.5–5 vol.% in the polylactide matrix leads to the formation of a continuous electrically conductive phase with an increase of electrical conductivity σ_dc above the percolation threshold. The simulation results were experimentally confirmed by optical microscopy and studies of the electrical conductivity of the composites. It was found that increasing CB content from φ = 1 vol.% to φ = 7 vol.% in the composites causes insignificant (due to the segregated structure) phase changes in the polylactide matrix and improves the thermal properties of composites. Electrically conductive filaments for Fused Deposition 3D Printing (FDM) were developed from PLA/CB composites and then 3D printed. A correlation between the electrical conductivity σ_dc and the CB content φ for base composites, filaments produced from them, and final 3D samples, has been found. Conductivity varies within σ_dc = 3.1·10⁻¹¹ − 10·10⁻³ S/cm for the filaments and σ_dc = 3.6·10⁻¹¹ − 8.1·10⁻⁴ S/cm for the final 3D-products.

As it is known, polyethylene (PE) is one of the common materials in the modern world, and PE products take the major share on industrial and trade markets. For example, various types of technical PE like PE-63, PE-80, and PE-100 have wide industrial applications, i.e., in construction, for pipeline systems etc. A rapid development of plastics industry outstrips detailed investigation of welding processes and welds’ formation mechanism, so they remain unexplored. There is still no final answer to the question how weld’s microstructure forms. Such conditions limit our way to the understanding of the problem and, respectively, prevent scientific approaches to the welding of more complicated (from chemical point of view) types of polymers than PE. Taking into account state-of-the-art, the article presents results of complex studies of PE weld, its structure, thermophysical and operational characteristics, analysis of these results, and basing on that some hypotheses of welded joint and weld structure formation. It is shown that welding of dissimilar types of polyethylene, like PE-80 and PE-100, leads to the formation of better-ordered crystallites, restructuring the crystalline phase, and amorphous areas with internal stresses in the welding zone.

The article is concerned with hybrid amorphous polymers synthesized basing on epoxy oligomer of diglycide aliphatic ester of polyethylene glycol that was cured by polyethylene polyamine and lithium perchlorate salt. Structural peculiarities of organic-inorganic polymer composites were studied by differential scanning calorimetry, wide-angle X-ray spectra, infrared spectroscopic, scanning electron microscopy, elemental analysis, and transmission and reflective optical microscopy. On the one hand, the results showed that the introduction of LiClO4 salt into epoxy polymer leads to formation of the coordinative metal-polymer complexes of donor-acceptor type between central Li+ ion and ligand. On the other hand, the appearance of amorphous microinclusions, probably of inorganic nature, was also found.