Mechanical testing and modelling of a vertically aligned carbon nanotube composite structure

Fabrication of three dimensional layered vertically aligned carbon nanotube structures and their potential applications

“…Carbon nanotubes are known to occupy only 1--2% of the volume of nanotube forests produced by CVD; the remainder is empty space. 18,19 Most of the surface of the growth substrate beneath the original forest layer thus remains unoccupied by the nanotubes. It is likely, therefore, that during the vacuum deposition process additional catalyst material is able to diffuse through the forest layer(s) and coat the substrate even through the original nanotube forest.…”

“…Repeating the catalyst deposition and CVD processes would allow the growth of multi--layers of CNTs up to arbitrary forest heights and in well--defined forms to fabricate specific structures. Due to their high aspect ratio and the high tensile strength of nanotubes, these stacked CNTs would be ideal for reinforcement of composite materials 3,5 or for cold spinning of CNT fibres.…”

Improving flexural and dielectric properties of MWCNT/epoxy nanocomposites by introducing advanced hybrid filler system

“…Previously, a great deal of research was conducted to overcome the challenges mentioned above; i.e., to improve the dispersion of CNT in the epoxy matrix [16][17][18][19][20][21]. Most techniques deal with processing issues rather than scrutinizing the filler design aspect or architecture.…”

“…Most techniques deal with processing issues rather than scrutinizing the filler design aspect or architecture. The research included investigations of different methods such as chemical functionalization [16][17][18][19], physical blending (ultrasonication or high shear mixing) [20,21] and hybridization [22]. Chemical functionalization focuses on the surface treatment of the CNT structure to improve its chemical interaction with the polymer matrix, resulting in enhanced dispersion.…”

Controlled preparation of carbon nanotube-conducting polymer composites at the polarisable organic/water interface

“…The mechanical, thermal and electronic properties of CPs can be greatly enhanced by the formation of CP-carbon nanotube (CNT) composite materials: key factors are the method of preparation of the composite material, which in many cases can impart an useful anisotropic component to the physical properties of the composite [8,9]. One method of achieving such anisotropy is to grow the polymer materials around the aligned CNT "forest", where the latter is prepared via chemical vapour deposition (CVD) [10]. It has been shown that polymerisation can be advantageously achieved through electrochemical methods, where the CNT is used as the working electrode to produce an intimate contact between the carbon nanostructure and the polymeric deposit [4,6].…”