Macroscopic Single‐Walled‐Carbon‐Nanotube Fiber Self‐Assembled by Dip‐Coating Method

Abstract

Pure macroscopic single-walled-carbon-nanotube (SWNT) fibers are fabricated by using a dip-coating method without any additive or additional electrical equipment or complex apparatus. The present method only utilizes microfluidics, which includes capillary condensation, capillary flow, and surface tension, and results in the self-assembly and self-alignment of SWNT colloids.

Polymer Composites with Carbon Nanotubes in Alignment

“…The improved mechanical and electrical properties of above aligned nanotube/polymer composite have been realized through the direct use of nanotube arrays, sheets, and fibers. In the case of other approaches to align nanotubes (Baji et al, 2010;Ge et al, 2004;Go et al, www.intechopen.com 2004; Haggenmueller et al, 2003;Jang et al, 2009;Ji et al, 2009;Kang et al, 2009;Razal et al, 2007;Vigolo et al, 2000Vigolo et al, , 2002, similar improvements were also observed. For instance, aligned nanotube/polyacrylonitrile fibers after hot-stretching treatment showed a significant enhancement of tensile strength by 320.7% (Ji et al, 2009), while aligned nanotube/epoxy arrays induced by electric field could improve electrical conductivities by four orders of magnitude in the direction of alignment .…”

“…The surface tension, jet elongation, and slow relaxation of nanotubes contribute to orientation of nanotubes. Some other approaches including coagulation-based spinning (Razal et al, 2007;Vigolo et al, 2000Vigolo et al, & 2002, melting spinning (Haggenmueller et al, 2003), dip coating method through microfluidic phenomena (Jang et al, 2009), and orientation by external stimuli such as mechanical interaction (Ji et al, 2009) had been also developed to synthesize aligned nanotube/polymer fibers. However, similar to the composite arrays and films, the nanotube alignments in the resulting composite fibers are much lower compared to the direct use of pure nanotube fibers.…”

Applications of Carbon Nanotubes to Flexible Transparent Conductive Electrodes

“…To deposit CNTs on the flexible substrates, various methods have been developed, including spray coating, dip coating, bar coating, and inkjet printing [18,19]. Among them, the spray coating method has the advantage that the thickness of deposited CNTs can be controlled precisely.…”

Binder-free, high-performance carbon nanotube line emitters fabricated using mechanical clamping process

“…Various macroscopic forms of CNTs have been produced, including fibers, yarns, films, sheets and foams [13][14][15][16][17][18]. Each structure shows a unique geometry and functionality depending on the manner in which CNTs are assembled [19,20].…”