Ultrathin SWCNT Films Enabled Multi-modal Fiber Sensors.

摘要

The success of a structure health monitoring (SHM) system for high- performance polymeric composite structures hinges upon noninvasive and embeddable sensors that can be reliably used for sensing the strain, temperature, moisture, irradiation, foreign objects strike damage and other unpredicted events experienced by the host structures. In this project, we developed single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) thin film enabled fiber sensors - SWCNT-FibSen to address this challenge. The fabrication of SWCNT-FibSen is simple, cost-effective, and environmental benign. It can be noninvasively embedded into a polymeric composite structure as a multimodal/multifun ction/multipurpose sensor for life-long (from manufacturing to failure) SHM of the host structure. The fundamental research leads to a series of new and reliable methods in characterizing the structures of SWCNTs in the dispersion. This allows for a better understanding of the piezoresistive mechanism(s) of SWCNT thin films and for establishing the processing-structure- property relationships of SWCNT-FibSen sensors. The fundamental and applied research results acquired through this project will pave the way for large- scale production and deployment of SWCNT-FibSen in SHM of polymeric composite structures.