Page 193 - Carbon Nanotube Fibres and Yarns

P. 193

CHAPTER 8

Mechanics modeling of carbon

nanotube yarns

Xiaohua Zhang a,b
a Innovation Center for Textile Science and Technology, Donghua University, Shanghai, China
b Division of Advanced Nano-Materials, Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, Chinese
Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, China

8.1 Introduction

The utilization of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) at the macroscopic scale is a
from-one-to-many story, due to the multilevel assembling process to pro-
duce macroscopic materials [1]. The one-dimensional (1D) CNT assembly,
a CNT yarn, also known as CNT fiber, has become one of the most im-
portant new materials owing to its light weight, high strength and modu-
lus, superior flexibility, and high electrical and thermal conductivity. The
history of CNT yarns can be divided into three periods: (1) exploration
of spinning methods (2000–2007), (2) production scale-up, performance
enhancement, and multi-functionalization (2008–2014), and (3) tackling
problems associated with industrialization (which will probably take more
than a decade from 2015). In the first period, three yarn formation methods
were developed, which are solution-spinning [2–5], spinning from a presyn-
thesized vertically aligned CNT forest [6–9], and direct spinning from an
entangled CNT aerogel while being formed in a high-temperature reactor
[10–15]. In the following several years, the attention was turned to the
mechanisms behind the coagulation process in solution spinning to achieve
high electrical performance [16–18], yarn structure control and continuous
production of aerogel-based yarns [19–28], and forest-based yarns [29–35]
with improved strength and electrical conductivity, and advanced dynamic
mechanical properties [36–38]. The potential applications of CNT yarns
include wearable energy storage and harvesting devices [39–52], lightweight
wires [53–59], and actuators [34, 60–67]. The investigation on CNT yarns
has now been turned to industrialization, as pointed out in several reviews
[68–73]. Several manufacturing companies have been established around

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