Characterization is a crucial step in the study of properties of nanomaterials to evaluate their full potential in applications. Carbon nanotube-based materials have properties that are sensitive to size, shape, concentration, and agglomeration state. It is therefore critical to quantitatively characterize these factors in situ, while the processing takes place. Traditional characterization techniques that rely on microscopy are often time consuming and in most cases provide qualitative results. Spectroscopy has been studied as an alternative tool for identifying, characterizing, and studying these materials in situ and in a quantitative way. In this paper, we provide a critical review of the spectroscopy techniques used to explore the surface properties (e.g., dispersion) characteristics of carbon nanotubes in aqueous suspensions during the sonication process.

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One of the major challenges towards controlling the transfer of electrical and mechanical properties of nanotubes into nanocomposites is the lack of adequate measurement systems to quantify the variations in bulk properties while the nanotubes were used as the reinforcement material. In this study, we conducted one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) on thickness and conductivity measurements. By analyzing the data collected from both experienced and inexperienced operators, we found some operation details users might overlook that resulted in variations, since conductivity measurements of CNT thin films are very sensitive to thickness measurements. In addition, we demonstrated how issues in measurements damaged samples and limited the number of replications resulting in large variations in the electrical conductivity measurement results. Based on this study, we proposed a faster, more reliable approach to measure the thickness of CNT thin films that operators can follow to make these measurement processes less dependent on operator skills.

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