Additive-free carbon nanotube dispersions, pastes, gels, and doughs in cresols
Abstract
Carbon nanotubes can now be produced in the ton scale in the form of powders, but they need to be further processed, usually by solution-based routes, into disaggregated and more usable forms for applications. There has been extensive effort to search and design solvents that can disperse nanotubes, which can also be easily removed afterward. Here, we report that m-cresol and its liquid mixtures with other isomers, which are already manufactured for other industrial purposes, are such solvents. They can disperse carbon nanotube powders of many types at unprecedentedly high concentrations, rendering them polymer-like rheological and viscoelastic properties, and high processability. This makes carbon nanotube powders immediately usable by current materials-processing techniques for creating desirable structures or composites.
- Publication:
-
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
- Pub Date:
- May 2018
- DOI:
- 10.1073/pnas.1800298115
- Bibcode:
- 2018PNAS..115.5703C