title: Soft, highly conductive nanotube sponges and composites with controlled compressibility.
abstract: Porous carbon nanotube networks represent a type of material that can achieve both structural robustness and high flexibility. We demonstrate here controlled synthesis of soft to hard sponges with densities ranging from 5 to 25 mg/cm(3), while retaining a porosity of >99%. The stable sponge-like structure allows excellent compressibility tunable up to 90% volume shrinkage, and the ability to recover most of volume by free expansion. Electrical resistivity of the sponges changes linearly and reversibly after 300 cycles of large-strain compression. Nanotubes forming the three-dimensional scaffold maintain good contact and percolation during large-strain deformation, polymer infiltration, and cross-linking process, suggesting potential applications as strain sensors and conductive nanocomposites.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Advanced Materials Processing Technology, Ministry of Education, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, P. R. China.
authors.forename: Xuchun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Gui
authors.forename: Anyuan
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.forename: Jinquan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.forename: Hongbian
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.forename: Zhen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Lili
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Fan
authors.forename: Kunlin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Hongwei
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Dehai
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wu
mesh_terms: D004553:Electric Conductivity; D055595:Mechanical Phenomena; D053761:Nanocomposites / Q000737:chemistry*; D037742:Nanotubes, Carbon / Q000737:chemistry*; D016062:Porosity; D013314:Stress, Mechanical
chemical_list: D037742:Nanotubes, Carbon