The Evolution of Carbon Nanotube Network Structure in Unidirectional Nanocomposites Resolved by Quantitative Electron Tomography
Name
Wardle_The evolution.pdf
Size
7.43 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
4eedcb2d431f71b0efcb17488bb04ad2
Author(s)
Natarajan, Bharath
Lam, Thomas
Long, Christian
Zhao, Minhua
Sharma, Renu
Liddle, J. Alexander
Wardle, Brian L
Lachman-Senesh, Noa
Jacobs, Douglas S.
Date Issued
June 2015
Journal
ACS Nano
Publisher
American Chemical Society (ACS)
Citation
Natarajan, Bharath et al. “The Evolution of Carbon Nanotube Network Structure in Unidirectional Nanocomposites Resolved by Quantitative Electron Tomography.” ACS Nano 9.6 (2015): 6050–6058. © 2015 American Chemical Society
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Carbon nanotube (CNT) reinforced polymers are next-generation, high-performance, multifunctional materials with a wide array of promising applications. The successful introduction of such materials is hampered by the lack of a quantitative understanding of process–structure–property relationships. These relationships can be developed only through the detailed characterization of the nanoscale reinforcement morphology within the embedding medium. Here, we reveal the three-dimensional (3D) nanoscale morphology of high volume fraction (Vf) aligned CNT/epoxy-matrix nanocomposites using energy-filtered electron tomography. We present an automated phase-identification method for fast, accurate, representative rendering of the CNT spatial arrangement in these low-contrast bimaterial systems. The resulting nanometer-scale visualizations provide quantitative information on the evolution of CNT morphology and dispersion state with increasing Vf, including network structure, CNT alignment, bundling and waviness. The CNTs are observed to exhibit a nonlinear increase in bundling and alignment and a decrease in waviness as a function of increasing Vf. Our findings explain previously observed discrepancies between the modeled and measured trends in bulk mechanical, electrical and thermal properties. The techniques we have developed for morphological quantitation are applicable to many low-contrast material systems.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.5b01044
