Morphology and processing of aligned carbon nanotube carbon matrix nanocomposites

• Main Authors: Stein, Itai Y (Contributor), Wardle, Brian L (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering (Contributor), Stein, Itai Y. (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier, 2017-07-05T14:55:34Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 Intrinsic and scale-dependent properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have led aligned CNT architectures to emerge as promising candidates for next-generation multifunctional applications. Enhanced operating regimes motivate the study of CNT-based aligned nanofiber carbon matrix nanocomposites (CNT A-CMNCs). However, in order to tailor the material properties of CNT A-CMNCs, porosity control of the carbon matrix is required. Such control is usually achieved via multiple liquid precursor infusions and pyrolyzations. Here we report a model that allows the quantitative prediction of the CNT A-CMNC density and matrix porosity as a function of number of processing steps. The experimental results indicate that the matrix porosity of A-CMNCs comprised of ∼1% aligned CNTs decreased from ∼61% to ∼55% after a second polymer infusion and pyrolyzation. The model predicts that diminishing returns for porosity reduction will occur after 4 processing steps (matrix porosity of ∼51%), and that >10 processing steps are required for matrix porosity <50%. Using this model, prediction of the processing necessary for the fabrication of liquid precursor derived A-CMNC architectures, with possible application to other nanowire/nanofiber systems, is enabled for a variety of high value applications.