DEVELOPMENT STUDY OF LIGHTWEIGHT STURCTUAL MATERIALS USING UD CARBON NANOTUBE SHEET

摘要

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have great mechanical, thermal and electrical properties [1-3]. They believed to be promising candidates as reinforcement for the next generation of high performance structural composites. CNTs were discovered in 1991 [4] and can be classified into single-walled CNT (SWCNT) and multi-walled CNT (MWCNT) [5]. Significant efforts have been focused on developing CNT composites over the last two decades. Studies of CNT composites so far have largely focused on improving the nanotube dispersion quality with the matrix. To achieve good quality CNT dispersion in polymer, short CNTs reinforced polymer composites with low volume fractions are typically utilized [6-7]. Although short CNT composites have some improvements in certain low volume fraction applications, such as thermally and electrically conducting materials, but their mechanical properties fall far short of traditional high performance carbon fiber reinforced composites, since achieving high volume fractions of dispersed CNTs in polymer is highly difficult.