Grafting of Conductive Polymers onto the Functionalized Carbon Nanotubes

摘要

Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) were functionalized and used as conducting bridge in the polyaniline (PANi) matrix. Since MWNTs are exceptional materials having many advantages as follows. The one is that they assumed to have good crystalline structure and thus, they are expected to show outstanding properties. The other is that they are considered as pseudo-one dimensional materials with high aspect ratio (length/diameter) and thus, they are expected to display low percolation threshold. To take advantages of those features, however, they have to be homogeneous dispersion into supporting matrices without damages such as side wall opening, breaking and turning amorphous carbons. Although many researchers have been studied on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) for two decades since their discovery, a remaining challenge is still homogeneous dispersion of CNTs into individual CNT. The most of investigators have explored the easiest ways to disperse CNTs by chemical oxidization in strong acids or physical breaking by sonication. Both approaches, however, destroy carbon frameworks resulting in loosing the outstanding properties of CNTs. The challenge in this proposal was covalent attachment of reactive functional groups onto the surface of MWNT with minimal damages. PNAi was able to graft onto the surface of functionalized MWNT. The resultant PANi grafted MWNT displayed significantly improved electrical properties. The results of proposed project has been presented in academic meetings and published in journals. They are listed below. The rest of portions are still pursuing and the results will be published to academic journals.