Elastic Recovery Properties of Ultralight Carbon Nanotube/Carboxymethyl Cellulose Composites

Kazuki Matsushima,Naoto Shioura,Tomonaga Ueno,Reo Yanagi,Takahiro Segi,Kenta Ono

doi:10.3390/ma14144059

Abstract

Ultralight materials exhibit superelastic behavior depending on the selection, blending, and carbonization of the materials. Recently, ultimate low-density materials of 5 mg/cm3 or less have attracted attention for applications such as sensors, electrodes, and absorbing materials. In this study, we fabricated an ultralight material composed of single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNT) and sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), and we investigated the effect of density, composition, and weight average molecular weight of CMC on elastic recovery properties of ultralight CNT/CMC composites. Our results showed that the elastic recovery properties can be improved by reducing the density of the composite, lowering the mass ratio of CNTs, and using CMC with small molecular weight.

Highlights

Ultralight materials with excellent functionality are being researched for applications in fields such as resource and energy conservation, transportation, and aerospace [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
In order to improve the elastic properties of these composite materials, we investigated the effects of material density, composition, and molecular weight of water-soluble polymers
We fabricated an ultralight material composed of single-walled carbon nanotubes (CNT) and carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), and we investigated the effect of density, composition, and weight average molecular weight of CMC on composite properties

Summary

Introduction

Ultralight materials with excellent functionality are being researched for applications in fields such as resource and energy conservation, transportation, and aerospace [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]. Ultralight materials based on nanocarbons, such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene, have attracted attention in many applications such as sensors, electrodes, insulators, and adsorbents [9,10,11,12,13] These ultralight materials are generally fabricated in the density range of less than 10 mg/cm , and much research has been conducted on the correlation between their structure and mechanical properties [13,14,15,16,17,18,19]. It has been reported that ultralight aerogels with density less than air density can be levitated in air by controlling the temperature and selectively expanding the air inside the aerogel [22] Such ultralight materials with ultimate lightness have the potential for further applications such as in communication and sky transportation [23,24]

Methods

Results

Conclusion