Hydrophilic/Hydrophobic characteristics on the carbon nanotube buckypapers with various mechanical and chemical manufacture process

Abstract

Over the years, carbon nanotube have been improved based on the dispersion and stabilization by various methods. This paper aims to improve the CNTs through chemical and mechanical methods so that the manufactured a buckypaper (CNT sheet) is becoming hydrophilic characteristics. The buckypaper enables high hydrophilic efficiency due to various production methods. Herein, the oxidation and alkalization method attaching functional groups such as hydroxyl and carboxyl were used for reinforcing the buckypaper hydrophilic, and grinding for shortening the length of CNTs was added. Therefore, CNTs with functional groups have a remarkable increase in hydrophilicity. The alkalized CNT based buckypaper has few defects and non-existent impurities on the surface. When dropping droplets, it exhibits high hydrophilic properties at low angles (66.66°) and it shows a distinct difference and speed compared to pristine CNT buckypaper (132.1°). Although the oxidized CNT and double oxidized CNT based buckypaper have defects on the wall, it shows low angles (61.09°, 81.26°) respectively as same tendency with alkalized buckypaper. The characteristics of hydrophilic enable the improvement of CNT dispersion, which can improve the properties of application technologies for requiring moisture enhancement. The hydrophilicity-modified tube structure 3D layered shows the potential of the interface field to apply moisture enhancement and absorption.