Study of Dispersion Effects on Exfoliation and Length Reduction of Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes towards Fabricating Polymer-based Composites

摘要

Owing to the large surface area of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT), in order to achieve high interfacial strength and efficient load transfer, good dispersion is required to exfoliate large SWNT bundles into small bundles or even individual tubes. Previous work has shown that polymer chains can be aligned along the carbon nanotubes in the axial direction of a fiber composite. Polymer chains tend to be less aligned or disordered in the bulk where the nanotubes are not present, which is to say that composites with shorter tubes have more disordered structures, whereas those with longer tubes are more ordered, thus resulting in stronger mechanical properties. For this reason, it is extremely important to understand the debundling and shortening process of SWNT during dispersion, and thus to preserve tube length for reinforcement efficiency in polymer-based composites.