Ultrahigh Loading of Carbon Nanotubes in Structural Resins for Advanced Composites

This project will develop a new family of composites from single wall carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) with loading equal or above 50%. A proprietary version of layer-by-layer assembly (LBL) technology will be applied to composite manufacturing of SWNTs combined with poly(ether ether ketone)(PEEK). The layers of polymer and SWNTs will be build-up on the substrate and then released to characterize the material in respect to structure, nanotube dispersion state, and mechanical properties. Using nanoscale engineering the structure of the LBL composite will be adjusted to exceed the record properties that we obtained previous for layered SWNT composites. Large scale coupons will be made using the method of fast LBL. The mechanical properties of the large scale samples will be evaluated and optimized.