Desirable electrical and mechanical properties of continuous hybrid nano-scale carbon fibers containing highly aligned multi-walled carbon nanotubes

Magnetic‐field‐assisted electrospinning highly aligned composite nanofibers containing well‐aligned multiwalled carbon nanotubes

“…The largest anisotropy was up to 15.4 when the MWCNTs concentration was 2 wt %. This illustrated that both the orientation of MWCNTs and composite nanofibers made the parallel component of resistance of composite nanofiber meshes drop significantly …”

“…With the concentration of MWCNTs increased from 0 to 5 wt %, the mean diameters of composite nanofibers were 511 ± 52, 492 ± 58, 485 ± 58, 640 ± 62, and 712 ± 70 nm and the degree of alignment of composite nanofibers were 85, 88.3, 90, 96.6, and 96.6%. In the MFAES process, the solution viscosity and conductivity are two important parameters, which can influence the diameters and degree of alignment of the composite nanofibers. The viscosity and conductivity increased with the increase of MWCNTs concentration from 0 to 5 wt %.…”

“…The incorporation of only a few percentages of CNTs into many polymers has led to a significant improvement in mechanical and electrical properties. It is generally believed that the key factors in optimizing the reinforcing effects of CNTs in polymer nanocomposites are the degree of dispersion of the CNTs, their alignment, and the interface adhesion between the CNTs and the polymer matrixes . Unfortunately, because of their high aspect ratio and strong van der Waals attractions, CNTs is favorable to aggregate, resulting in an inhomogeneous dispersion in polymer matrixes.…”

Mesoscale evolution of non-graphitizing pyrolytic carbon in aligned carbon nanotube carbon matrix nanocomposites

“…Two polymeric precursors commonly utilized for the synthesis of PyCs include polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and phenol-formaldehyde (P-F), both of which yield nongraphitizing PyCs, as coined by Franklin in the 1950s [37], that are characterized by smaller graphitic crystallites that exhibit significant disorder, lack a preferential alignment direction, and enclose randomly-shaped meso-scale pores [37][38][39][40]. Although the influence of CNT confinement on the structural evolution of PAN during pyrolysis was previously studied in detail [41][42][43][44][45][46][47], and it was found that CNTs may [41][42][43] or may not [44][45][46][47] help facilitate graphitization at T p < 1500 • C, not much is currently known about how CNTs impact the graphitic crystallite growth and self-organization in P-F composites. A recent report has explored the impact of CNT confinement on the pyrolyzation of P-F [48], but this study did not report the evolution of the three common measures that normally characterize the graphitic crystallites that comprise the PyCs [49][50][51][52][53][54]: the crystallite size (L a ) originating from the (100) and (110) 3D lattice planes (i.e., via the [100] and [110] Miller indices also known as hkℓ); the crystallite thickness (L c ) originating from the (002) lattice plane (i.e., via the [002] hkℓ); and the inter-layer separation of the (002) lattice planes (d 002 ).…”

Preparation and characterization of P(AN‐co‐VA‐co‐DEMA) fibers coated with multiwalled carbon nanotubes by electrostatic interactions

“…At present, with the development of smart fabrics, conductive PAN fibers have become attractive. Incorporation of CNTs to PAN matrix can endow PAN fibers with better electrical properties . However, how to effectively create CNTs networks in PAN matrix to form electrical pathway poses a major challenge.…”