Nanotailored Carbon Fibers & Forms

The incorporation of carbon nanotubes into host matrices or the assembly of them into devices is today’s technical challenge and opportunity. Carbon fibers are widely used in a variety of applications including aerospace, military and commercial. These applications are limited by the trade-offs that must be made between structural and conductivity properties. A new area of interest is the nanotailoring of fibers with carbon nanotubes to produce a high strength, high modulus light weight fiber that is thermally and electrically conductive. The greatest challenge to optimizing the benefits from SWNTs in polymer composites and fibers is the difficulty in obtaining a high degree of uniform dispersion and preferably, dispersion at the molecular level. To address these critical issues, the NanoRidge Materials / Rice University Team (TEAM) propose using several strategies to obtain high dispersion within the SWNT/polymer solution and fiber. The objective of this Phase I proposal is to establish the technical basis for synthesis and characterization of high strength light weight nanotube tailored carbon fibers. The NanoRidge/RICE Team will focus our work on developing continuous fiber processing technology based on pre-existing work to maximize SWNT dispersion and alignment for the fiber spinning process. Work will also include extensive characterization to understand internal structure and process-morphology, establish the performance data base of process-property-morphology on nanotube tailored carbon fibers.