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Composites such as carbon fiber are used extensively by automotive, aerospace, marine, and energy industries due to their strong mechanical properties. However, there are still many areas it is lacking in testing, especially related to its electrophoretic deposition. In this research work, the tensile strength and Young’s modulus of CNT–CF/epoxy composites were measured using the tensile test by varying the electrophoretic deposition (EPD) process parameters. Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimize the three main parameters in this EPD process: the volume ratio (water as the basis), deposition voltage, and time to obtain the maximum tensile properties of the composites. There were four volume ratios (0%, 20%, 80% and 100%) used in this design of experiment (DoE) with ratios’ pairs of 0%, 100%, and 20%, 80%. For this study, water and methanol were used as the suspension medium. This design’s deposition voltage and time were 10 to 20 V and 5 to 15 min. ANOVA further verified the responses’ adequacy. The optimum conditions for the first Design of Experiment (DoE) (0% and 100%) were identified as a volume ratio of 99.99% water, deposition voltage of 10 V, and 12.14 min. These conditions provided the maximum strength of these composites with a tensile strength of 7.41 N/mm2 and Young’s modulus of 279.9 N/mm2. Subsequently, for the second DoE (20% and 80%), tensile strength of 7.28 N/mm2 and Young’s modulus of 274.1 N/mm2 were achieved with the ideal conditions: volume ratio of 44.80% water, deposition voltage of 10.04 V, and time of 6.89 min. It can be concluded that the ideal interaction between these three EPD parameters was necessary to achieve composites with good tensile properties.

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Carbon nanotubes (CNTs), composed of graphene/graphite sheets, have been used since the 1990s and become one of the most important materials owing to its massive applications in energy, environmental and life sciences. In general, there are two types of known CNTs such as single-walled CNTs (SWCNTs) and multi-walled CNTs (MWCNTs). They have broader and novel fields of application in the fabric and textile industries, wastewater treatment, energy storage, and also as structural reinforcement materials. CNTs are reported to synthesize by arc discharge, laser ablation and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) methods where CVD technique is found to be the most versatile and largely used method. In all the methods synthesized CNTs contain various degrees of impurities which are purified by oxidation treatment, ultra-sonication, magnetic purification, etc. CNTs have wide range of industrial applications due to their remarkable mechanical, thermal, electrical, chemical and biological properties. In this review, medical and biomedical applications of CNTs and CNTs-based composites are specially focused due to their significant applications in these fields along with their structure, classification, preparation and related properties. Besides, CNTs’ toxicity and biosafety, especially on the human body, are also discussed in this review article.

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