Chapter 11 - Carbon Nanotube Hybrid Fabric and Tape

Abstract

Carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the universe and is a versatile element to form advanced lightweight materials. In contrast, metals provide a different suite of properties including low cost, high conductivities, and scalability, while ceramics provide abrasion resistance and fire retardancy. An obstacle in materials science has been the inability to manufacture a material that integrates carbon materials and metals or ceramics together into a reproducible material whose properties can be customized to meet specific design requirements. One application is to produce electrically and thermally conductive nanotube hybrid sheet for use as performance fabrics and textiles. Thus, an area that will benefit from interdisciplinary research is developing a process to synthesize carbon nanotube hybrid materials. This chapter describes initial research into developing a continuous manufacturing process to integrate metal and ceramic nanoparticles (NPs) with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and produce continuous materials (sheet, tapes, and yarn) whose properties can be customized based on the constituent metals.