A review of the microstructure and rheology of carbon nanotube suspensions

Abstract

The present review is concerned with the way that the incorporation of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into a fluid matrix can modify the microstructure and rheology of the resulting suspensions. Some background to CNT manufacture and in particular methods of dispersing them into a suspension is presented for a range of different systems, where effective dispersion of CNTs remains a delicate and open issue. Steady shear, linear viscoelasticity, non-linear viscoelasticity and extensional responses are classified for a range of different CNT/matrix combinations together with their associated microstructure. The rheological modelling of certain CNT/matrix systems is reviewed, with particular attention given to the authors' work on modelling CNT suspension behaviour using Fokker-Planck advection-diffusion modelling.

Viscoelastic behavior of multiwalled carbon nanotubes into phenolic resin

“…This is in accordance with Theoretical expectations and experimental observations for fiber-reinforced composites [19][20][21][22] . The complex viscosity is also an important parameter to characterize the rheological properties of a material.…”

“…(%) CNT dispersion after to be used aqueous solution and passes into the TRC. As it can be observed and has also been reported in the literature [19][20][21][22] , the storage modulus is sensible to the reinforcement resulting from the added CNTs especially in the low frequency range. Storage modulus has increased with the incorporation of the CNTs into the polymer matrix; this enhancement was significantly higher as lower frequencies.…”

“…Therefore, understanding the rheological response of CNTs in fluids is of the most importance for design of polymer processing parameters. The rheological response of CNTs has been studied in a variety of polymer and polymer solutions but few works has been described from the literature involving CNT dispersion into phenolic resin by using three roll calender (TRC) processing [19][20][21][22] . This study approaches two main objectives: firstly, the development of strategies to efficiently incorporate CNTs into phenolic resin, by using chemical and mechanical routs; secondly, to understand the viscoelastic behavior on phenolic resin when reinforced with different amounts of CNT.…”

Single‐Walled Carbon Nanotube Dispersion Structures for Improved Energy Density in Supercapacitors

“…This negatively polarizes the SWCNTs and allows them to disperse well in pure H2O without the use of additional surfactants 1 . The addition of surfactants has been shown to negatively affect the performance of CNTs and it is difficult to remove the surfactant from the CNT network after processing 14 . After acid functionalizing, the SWCNT acid mixture was diluted with de-ionized water washed through a filter to remove the acidity from the CNTs.…”

Monitoring the Production of Polymer Nanocomposites by Melt Compounding with On-line Rheometry

“…Thus, the indirect characterization of dispersion by other techniques (such as X-ray diffraction, rheology, infra-red analysis), or the direct measurement of relevant final features (tensile properties, electrical conductivity) are often adopted. It has been extensively shown that the rheological response of nanocomposites is sensitive to changes at different length scales (Huang et al, 2006;Lertwimolnun and Vergnes, 2006;Ray, 2006;Vermant et al, 2007;Cassagnau, 2008;Park et al, 2008;Ma et al, 2008;Vergnes, 2011). Thus, as rheometers are readily available in most laboratories, sample preparation is not too complicated and measurements are relatively straightforward, rheology is currently one of the most used methods to characterize dispersion.…”