Carbon nanotube fibers and films: synthesis, applications and perspectives of the direct-spinning method

Abstract

The direct-spinning method of creation of CNT macroassemblies has received a lot of attention because of its simplicity to produce high-performance material without apparent limits to its size. CNT fibers or films have shown unparalleled properties and opened new areas of research and commercial development. The process designed more than a decade ago has already given interesting information about the basic science of nanomaterials, which in parallel led to the creation of the first prototypes with high potential of implementation in everyday life. Because of this, there has been growing interest in this technique with research articles coming into view from all around the world on a frequent basis. This review aims to summarize all the progress made in the direct-spinning process on a spectrum of fronts ranging from the study of complex synthesis parameters, material properties to its viable applications. The strong and weak points of the "Cambridge process" are carefully evaluated to put forward what challenges are most pressing. The future overlook puts the state of the art into perspective and suggests the prospective research directions.

Understanding the Mechanical and Conductive Properties of Carbon Nanotube Fibers for Smart Electronics

“…From the past two decades of rapid development, a brief history of CNT fiber can be summarized: 1) exploration of spinning methods, from 2000 to 2007, 2) production scale‐up, performance enhancement, and multifunctionalization, from 2008 to 2014, and 3) tackling problems associated with industrialization, possibly more than a decade since 2015. (Note that there have been several important reviews on CNT fibers, by Lu et al, Sun et al, Miao, Di et al, Janas and Koziol, Yadav et al, and Jung et al, however, without clearly showing such three stages.) In the first period, three fiber spinning methods were developed, which are solution spinning, spinning from a presynthesized vertically aligned CNT forest, and direct spinning from an entangled CNT aerogel while being formed in a high‐temperature reactor .…”

“…Meanwhile, potential applications of CNT fibers have been developed, including wearable energy storage and harvesting devices, lightweight wires, and actuators . Then, the investigation on CNT fibers has been turned to realize industrialization, as pointed out in several reviews . Several manufacturing companies have been established around the world, including Q‐Flo Ltd., Nanocomp Technologies, Inc., Suzhou Creative Nano Carbon Co. Ltd., Super C, Inc., and DexMat…”

“…It is well‐recognized that both mechanical and conductive properties of CNT fibers are mainly determined by the intrinsic structure and properties of individual CNTs, their waviness and alignment within the fiber, as well as the intertube property transfer efficiency. As several review articles regarding CNT fiber fabrications and their applications have been published in the last few years, here, we introduce a progress report on such topic, presenting the fundamental understanding of the mechanical and conductive properties of CNT fibers and underscoring the challenges and opportunities of their applications of smart electronics.…”

Corrosion behaviour of cast and deformed copper-carbon nanotube composite wires in chloride media

“…These materials are shown in Figure 3. The macrostructures are produced by the CVD dry direct spinning method and the nanotubes show orientation in the drawing direction (Koziol et al, 2007;Sundaram et al, 2011;Janas & Koziol, 2016). All types of nanotubes, SWNT, DWNT and MWNT, bundle together spontaneously to a certain degree during synthesis due to Van der Waals interactions (Thess et al, 1996;Colomer et al, 2004;Li et al, 2005).…”

“…The CNT raw material used in publications I-IV was produced at the University of Cambridge. The CNT material was produced by the floating catalyst CVD dry spinning method with a ferrocene catalyst as shown in Figure 9 and demonstrated by Koziol et al (2007), Lekawa-Raus et al (2014) and Janas & Koziol (2016). The winder was covered with transparent acetate sheets, aluminium foil, or sheets of writing paper, which could be removed from the winder to retrieve the sample material.…”