2012 journal article

Ultrastrong, Foldable, and Highly Conductive Carbon Nanotube Film

ACS NANO, 6(6), 5457–5464.

co-author countries: China 🇨🇳 United States of America 🇺🇸
author keywords: carbon nanotube; film; tensile strength; alignment; bending; charge collector
MeSH headings : Compressive Strength; Elastic Modulus; Electric Conductivity; Macromolecular Substances / chemistry; Materials Testing; Membranes, Artificial; Molecular Conformation; Nanotubes, Carbon / chemistry; Nanotubes, Carbon / ultrastructure; Particle Size; Surface Properties; Tensile Strength
Source: Web Of Science
Added: August 6, 2018

Preparation of strong, flexible, and multifunctional carbon-based films has attracted considerable interest not only in fundamental research areas but also for industrial applications. We report a binder-free, ultrastrong, and foldable carbon nanotube (CNT) film using aligned few-walled nanotube sheets drawn from spinnable nanotube arrays. The film exhibits tensile strengths up to ∼2 GPa and a Young’s modulus up to ∼90 GPa, which is markedly superior to other types of carbon-based films reported, including commercial graphite foils, buckypapers, and graphene-related papers. The film can bear severe bending (even being folded) and shows good structure integrity and negligible change in electric conductivity. The unique structure of the CNT film (good nanotube alignment, high packing density) provides the film with direct and efficient transport paths for electricity. As a flexible charge collector, it favors a magnesium oxide coating to exhibit high charge/discharge rate stability and an excellent electrochemical capacitance close to its theoretical value.