Fabrication and Properties of Macroscopic Carbon Nanotube Assemblies Transforming from Aligned Nanotubes

Y N Zhang,L X Zheng,G Z Sun

doi:10.1155/2015/907954

Abstract

Macroscale assemblies of well-aligned carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can inherit intrinsic properties from individual CNTs and at the same time ease handling difficulties that occur at nanometer scale when dealing with individual CNTs. Herein, simple fabrication processes are introduced to produce a variety of macroscale CNT assemblies, including well-aligned CNT bundles, CNT films, and CNT fibers, from the same starting material: spinnable CNT arrays. The electrical and mechanical properties of the as-prepared CNT assemblies have been investigated and compared. It is found that CNT films show an electrical conductivity of 145~250 S cm−1which is comparable to CNT fibers, but two orders magnitude higher than that of conventional Bucky paper. CNT fibers exhibit diameter dependent tensile strength which is mainly attributed to the nonuniform twisting along the radial direction of fibers.

Highlights

The excellent electrical, mechanical, thermal, and optical properties of one-dimensional (1D) carbon nanotubes (CNTs) provide them a wide range of potential applications [1,2,3]
Well-aligned CNT bundle, CNT film, and CNT fibers are of particular interest because they can largely preserve the unique properties of individual CNTs and enable new advanced applications that existing materials cannot achieve
We report simple fabrication processes to produce CNT bundle, CNT fiber, and anisotropic CNT film from the same starting material: spinnable CNT array

Summary

Introduction

The excellent electrical, mechanical, thermal, and optical properties of one-dimensional (1D) carbon nanotubes (CNTs) provide them a wide range of potential applications [1,2,3]. In the past two decades, considerable attention has been paid to the use of CNTs as building blocks for high performance materials [4,5,6,7] Due to their outstanding ballistic electronic conduction and insensitivity to electromigration, CNTs are able to withstand current densities up to 109 A cm−2, which is a thousand times greater than that of noble metals [8]. High strength CNT fibers have been spun from vertically aligned CNT arrays [23, 24] These macroarchitectures, depending on the manner in which they are assembled, display a variety of fascinating features that cannot be achieved using conventional materials. Well-aligned CNT bundle, CNT film, and CNT fibers are of particular interest because they can largely preserve the unique properties of individual CNTs and enable new advanced applications that existing materials cannot achieve. The structures and properties of these assemblies have been extensively studied

Materials and Methods

Fabrication and Characterization of Macroscopic CNT Assemblies

Properties of Macroscopic CNT Assemblies

Conclusions