title: High-strength composite fibers: realizing true potential of carbon nanotubes in polymer matrix through continuous reticulate architecture and molecular level couplings.
abstract: 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.
authors: Beijing National Laboratory of Condensed Matter, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, People's Republic of China.
authors: Wenjun
authors: W
authors: Ma
authors: Luqi
authors: L
authors: Liu
authors: Zhong
authors: Z
authors: Zhang
authors: Rong
authors: R
authors: Yang
authors: Gang
authors: G
authors: Liu
authors: Taihua
authors: T
authors: Zhang
authors: Xuefeng
authors: X
authors: An
authors: Xiaosu
authors: X
authors: Yi
authors: Yan
authors: Y
authors: Ren
authors: Zhiqiang
authors: Z
authors: Niu
authors: Jinzhu
authors: J
authors: Li
authors: Haibo
authors: H
authors: Dong
authors: Weiya
authors: W
authors: Zhou
authors: Pulickel M
authors: PM
authors: Ajayan
authors: Sishen
authors: S
authors: Xie