Reorientation and Flow of Liquid Crystal for a Pressure Sensor Using Carbon Nanotube Sheets

Abstract

The sensors based on single tubes have reproducibility issue since the tubes, especially the single-wall CNTs, have inherent structural and electronic differences affecting their mechanical and conductive characteristics. In addition, individual CNTs have limited maximum length up to which they preserve their structure and best properties. Reliable fabrication of nanoscale sensors using individual nanotubes is challenging also because of the difficulties to precisely manipulate and create orientationally ordered arrays of individual nanotubes between electrodes, ideally without additives, and transfer this process on a large scale while minimizing the steps and avoiding to alter the CNT properties. Composites with dispersed CNTs that are disordered also have limited applicability due to the nonuniformity of their spatial density distribution and of the length and diam-