Multifunctional Carbon Nanotube Fiber Composites

摘要

The project provides a spinning process that results in continuous nanotube composite fibers that are about an order of magnitude tougher than any fibers made by mankind or nature. We make two hundred-meter long reels of continuous nanotube-polymer composite fiber at 70X the prior-art rate and achieve fiber strengths higher than 1.8 GPa. Our drawn nanotube fibers match the energy absorption capability of spider silk up to the breaking strain of this silk (30%), and continue absorbing energy until they reach an energy-to- break of 570 J/g, as compared with 160 J/g for the spider silk and 50 J/g for Spectra fiber, 33 J/g for Kevlar fiber. The density-normalized fiber tensile strength is presently 2.2X that of high performance steel wire and the density- normalized Young's modulus of the nanotube fiber and steel wire are identical. We have fabricated these fibers into 100 micron diameter, high performance supercapacitors that are woven into textiles. Other major advances in nanotube spinning, actuation, energy storage, and thermal energy harvesting are described which are potentially important for synthetic multifunctional materials applications.