Pioneering carbon nanotube textile engineering & fashion technology

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) individually have extraordinary properties. However, macroscale fabric and tape made from CNTs have much reduced properties compared to individual CNTs. CNT in macroscale forms are also expensive to produce as the yield of the CNT synthesis process is low and assembling individual CNT into large size fabrics is complicated and expensive. Thus the two main barriers to putting CNT fabric into applications are to improve the material properties and to scale-up manufacturing yield to reduce cost. These aspects are discussed in this paper. Examples of CNT fabric and tape are shown in Figure 1. The tape can be twisted to form yarn which is stronger than tape.