Highly Conductive Carbon Nanotube-Thermoplastic Polyurethane Nanocomposite for Smart Clothing Applications and Beyond

Abstract

The following paper presents a simple, inexpensive and scalable method of production of carbon nanotube-polyurethane elastomer composite. The new method enables the formation of fibers with 40% w/w of nanotubes in a polymer. Thanks to the 8 times higher content of nanotubes than previously reported for such composites, over an order of magnitude higher electrical conductivity is also observed. The composite fibers are highly elastic and both their electrical and mechanical properties may be easily controlled by changing the nanotubes content in the composite. It is shown that these composite fibers may be easily integrated with traditional textiles by sewing or ironing. However, taking into account their light-weight, high conductivity, flexibility and easiness of molding it may be expected that their potential applications are not limited to the smart textiles industry.

Spun Carbon Nanotube Fibres and Films as an Alternative to Printed Electronic Components

“…The above-presented results and analysis show that spun CNT materials may in many cases replace printed CNT structures, offering both better electrical and mechanical performance [12,13,23,51]. However, analysis of the potential of the standard printing techniques shows that the use of spun materials also has some drawbacks and limitations.…”

“…These devices would, in many cases, be impossible to produce using classical electronics as they include flexible, stretchable or transparent electrodes, antennas and displays. Additionally, these materials allow the construction of specialized components, such as structural electronic elements that can be used in both the automotive and aerospace industries as well as components for the use in the smart textiles area [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. The solutions offered by printed electronics can improve both the functionality and reliability, while significantly decreasing the weight, size and cost of many of the systems and devices.…”

“…Materials that are particularly widely studied in this context are carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and graphene [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. This is due to their light weight, high electrical and thermal conductivity, strength and low cost.…”

Vibration Analysis of Fluid Conveying Carbon Nanotubes Based on Nonlocal Timoshenko Beam Theory by Spectral Element Method

“…In this example, we analyzed the free vibrations of a simply supported SWCNT conveying fluid with the same material parameters as those in Table 1. The density of the internal fluid was 1.0 g/cm 3 . For the purpose of investigating the effects of α and fluid velocity u on the natural frequencies, we calculated the first five natural frequencies of SWCNT conveying fluid in two cases, i.e., constant fluid velocity u = 0.4 with different SSPs α and constant α = 0.2 with different fluid velocities.…”

“…Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been extensively used in numerous areas due to their excellent mechanical properties [1,2]. A deep understanding of the mechanical behavior of CNTs leads to wider applications [3,4]. In general, a molecular dynamics simulation and experimental methods are usually adopted to predict the mechanical behavior of a CNT [5][6][7].…”