High-strength composite fibers: realizing true potential of carbon nanotubes in polymer matrix through continuous reticulate architecture and molecular level couplings.
Carbon nanotubes have unprecedented mechanical properties as defect-free nanoscale building blocks, but their potential has not been fully realized in composite materials due to weakness at the interfaces. Here we demonstrate that through load-transfer-favored three-dimensional architecture and molecular level couplings with polymer chains, true potential of CNTs can be realized in composites as initially envisioned. Composite fibers with reticulate nanotube architectures show order of magnitude improvement in strength compared to randomly dispersed short CNT reinforced composites reported before. The molecular level couplings between nanotubes and polymer chains results in drastic differences in the properties of thermoset and thermoplastic composite fibers, which indicate that conventional macroscopic composite theory fails to explain the overall hybrid behavior at nanoscale.
Ma
Wenjun
W
Beijing National Laboratory of Condensed Matter, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, People's Republic of China.
Liu
Luqi
L
Zhang
Zhong
Z
Yang
Rong
R
Liu
Gang
G
Zhang
Taihua
T
An
Xuefeng
X
Yi
Xiaosu
X
Ren
Yan
Y
Niu
Zhiqiang
Z
Li
Jinzhu
J
Dong
Haibo
H
Zhou
Weiya
W
Ajayan
Pulickel M
PM
Xie
Sishen
S