Simultaneously enhanced tenacity, rupture work, and thermal conductivity of carbon nanotube fibers by raising effective tube portion

Xiao Zhang; Michael De Volder; Wenbin Zhou; Liron Issman; Xiaojun Wei; Adarsh Kaniyoor; Jeronimo Terrones Portas; Fiona Smail; Zibo Wang; Yanchun Wang; Huaping Liu; Weiya Zhou; James Elliott; Sishen Xie; Adam Boies

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abq3515

Simultaneously enhanced tenacity, rupture work, and thermal conductivity of carbon nanotube fibers by raising effective tube portion

Sci Adv. 2022 Dec 14;8(50):eabq3515. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abq3515. Epub 2022 Dec 14.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
² Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, UK.
³ MOE Key Laboratory of Enhanced Heat Transfer and Energy Conservation, Beijing Key Laboratory of Heat Transfer and Energy Conversion, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing 100124, China.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB3 0FS, UK.

Abstract

Although individual carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are superior to polymer chains, the mechanical and thermal properties of CNT fibers (CNTFs) remain inferior to synthetic fibers because of the failure of embedding CNTs effectively in superstructures. Conventional techniques resulted in a mild improvement of target properties while degrading others. Here, a double-drawing technique is developed to rearrange the constituent CNTs. Consequently, the mechanical and thermal properties of the resulting CNTFs can simultaneously reach their highest performances with specific strength ~3.30 N tex^-1 (4.60 GPa), work of rupture ~70 J g^-1, and thermal conductivity ~354 W m^-1 K^-1 despite starting from low-crystallinity materials (I_G:I_D ~ 5). The processed CNTFs are more versatile than comparable carbon fiber, Zylon and Dyneema. On the basis of evidence of load transfer efficiency on individual CNTs measured with in situ stretching Raman, we find that the main contributors to property enhancements are the increasing of the effective tube contribution.