Mass Transport Through Carbon Nanotube–Polystyrene Bundles

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes have been widely used as test channels to study nanofluidic transport, which has been found to have distinctive properties compared to transport of fluids in macroscopic channels. A long-standing challenge in the study of mass transport through carbon nanotubes (CNTs) is the determination of flow enhancement. Various experimental investigations have been conducted to measure the flow rate through CNTs, mainly based on either vertically aligned CNT membranes or individual CNTs. Here, we proposed an alternative approach that can be used to quantify the mass transport through CNTs. This is a simple method relying on the use of carbon nanotube–polystyrene bundles, which are made of CNTs pulled out from a vertically aligned CNT array and glued together by polystyrene. We experimentally showed by using fluorescent tagging that the composite bundles allowed measureable and selective mass transport through CNTs. This type of composite bundle may be useful in various CNT research areas as they are simple to fabricate, less likely to form macroscopic cracks, and offer a high density of CNT pores while maintaining the aligned morphology of CNTs.