Kai Liu et al 2010 Nanotechnology 21 045708 doi:10.1088/0957-4484/21/4/045708
Kai Liu1,2, Yinghui Sun1, Ruifeng Zhou1, Hanyu Zhu1, Jiaping Wang1, Liang Liu1, Shoushan Fan1 and Kaili Jiang1
Show affiliationsWe 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.
62.25.-g Mechanical properties of nanoscale systems
Issue 4 (29 January 2010)
Received 19 October 2009, in final form 23 November 2009
Published 16 December 2009
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