title: Carbon nanotube yarns with high tensile strength made by a twisting and shrinking method.
abstract: We report a simple and continuous spinning method that combines twisting and shrinking processes to produce carbon nanotube yarns. In this method, a yarn freshly spun from a super-aligned carbon nanotube array is first twisted and then passes through a volatile solvent for shrinking. The as-produced yarn consists of densely packed carbon nanotubes, and thus has a tensile strength up to about 1 GPa. The tensile strength depends on the diameter and the twisting angle of the yarn. Different kinds of solvents, such as water, ethanol, and acetone, are used to shrink the twisted yarns, and acetone shows the best shrinking effect. The origin of the solvent shrinking effect is investigated. Our method is favorable for continuous mass production of high strength carbon nanotube yarns with a wide range of diameters, especially ultra-thin yarns.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Kai
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Yinghui
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: Ruifeng
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.forename: Hanyu
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Jiaping
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Shoushan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.forename: Kaili
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Jiang
mesh_terms: D000096:Acetone / Q000737:chemistry; D055119:Elastic Modulus; D000431:Ethanol / Q000737:chemistry; D037742:Nanotubes, Carbon / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000648:ultrastructure; D012997:Solvents / Q000737:chemistry; D013718:Tensile Strength; D014867:Water / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D037742:Nanotubes, Carbon; D012997:Solvents; D014867:Water; D000096:Acetone; D000431:Ethanol