Three millimetre thick plaques were obtained by compression moulding in a hot press (Moore, UK) of the pellets of the various compositions at 150 C under an applied pressure of 1.42 MPa.
The pellets were kept during a period of 8 min without pressure and 2 min with pressure, followed by a cooling period under pressure. Tensile specimens with dog bone shape according to
ISO 527-2 (with a cross-section of 3 4mm at the neck) were machined by a Roland 3D Plotter (MDX-20, UK).
The tensile properties were determined using a Universal tensile machine (Instron 4505 Universal Machine, USA) with a load cell of 1 kN and a gauge length of 25 mm and a crosshead speed of 5 mm/min.
Samples were conditioned at room temperature for at least 48 h before testing and it was used 9 specimens per condition. The tensile force was taken as the maximum force in the force deformation curve. Tensile modulus was estimated from
the initial slope of the stress–strain curve (between 0.05% and 0.25% strain) using linear regression. The normality of the distribution of the mechanical results was evaluated using the Shapiro-WilK test confirming their normal distribution at p < 0.05. The results were compared using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with the post hoc Bonferroni multiple comparison tests to infer about the significant differences between mean values of the developed functionalized composites and the differences were considered significantly different at p < 0.05 (*).