Abstract
We report the effect of annealing, both electrical and by applied voltage, on the electrical conductivity of fibers spun from carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Commercial CNT fibers were used as part of a larger goal to better understand the factors that go into making a better electrical conductor from CNT fibers. A study of thermal annealing in a vacuum up to 800 °C was performed on smaller fiber sections along with a separate analysis of voltage annealing up to 7 VDC; both exhibited a sweet spot in the process as determined by a combination of a two-point probe measurement with a nanoprobe, resonant Raman spectroscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Scaled-up tests were then performed in order to translate these results into bulk samples inside a tube furnace, with similar results that indicate the potential for an optimized method of achieving a better conductor sample made from CNT fibers. The results also help to determine the surface effects that need to be overcome in order to achieve this.
Highlights
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been the subject of many research groups worldwide for nearly three decades and their untapped potential is still the subject of newly published articles daily. This is not to say that CNTs have never made it out of the lab, and there are several different applications that are in use already in industries ranging from energy, manufacturing, construction, sports, transportation, and even as art [1,2,3,4]
The electrical resistance was calculated at each point and the same process was repeated for all other such acquisitions at different locations along the CNT fiber surface
RaAs withversus the thermal-annealing experiments in may the nanoprobe itself,for thethis resonant man spectroscopy of the longer CNT-fiber samples that were annealed in a tube furnace shows in Figure 7a the relative content of CNTs to amorphous carbon impurities increasing with annealing temperature, reaching a maximum when the samples were annealed at 400 and 500 ◦ C, and decreasing again
Summary
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been the subject of many research groups worldwide for nearly three decades and their untapped potential is still the subject of newly published articles daily This is not to say that CNTs have never made it out of the lab, and there are several different applications that are in use already in industries ranging from energy, manufacturing, construction, sports, transportation, and even as art [1,2,3,4]. There have been many attempts at this, including spinning out long individual CNT fibers, drawing and extruding acid-doped CNT fibers [6], and even composite fibers of CNTs and the aforementioned copper [7,8,9,10] The latter approach, when not completely made in-house, involves the use of commercial CNT fibers that are often. We believe this makes the results described a unique methodology
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