Mechanical property enhancement of aligned multi-walled carbon nanotube sheets and composites through press-drawing process

A solid-state drawing and winding process was done to create thin aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) sheets from CNT arrays. However, waviness and poor packing of CNTs in the sheets are two main weaknesses restricting their reinforcing efficiency in composites. This report proposes a simple press-drawing technique to reduce wavy CNTs and to enhance dense packing of CNTs in the sheets. Non-pressed and pressed CNT/epoxy composites were developed using prepreg processing with a vacuum-assisted system. Effects of pressing on the mechanical properties of the aligned CNT sheets and CNT/epoxy composites were examined. Pressing with distributed loads of 147, 221, and 294 N/m showed a substantial increase in the tensile strength and the elastic modulus of the aligned CNT sheets and their composites. The CNT sheets under a press load of 221 N/m exhibited the best mechanical properties found in this study. With a press load of 221 N/m, the pressed CNT sheet and its composite, respectively, enhanced the tensile strength by 139.1 and 141.9%, and the elastic modulus by 489 and 77.6% when compared with non-pressed ones. The pressed CNT/epoxy composites achieved high tensile strength (526.2 MPa) and elastic modulus (100.2 GPa). Results show that press-drawing is an important step to produce superior CNT sheets for development of high-performance CNT composites.     

Smart Utilization of Carbon Dots in Semiconductor Photocatalysis

Efficient capture of solar energy will be critical to meeting the energy needs of the future. Semiconductor photocatalysis is expected to make an important contribution in this regard, delivering both energy carriers (especially H₂) and valuable chemical feedstocks under direct sunlight. Over the past few years, carbon dots (CDs) have emerged as a promising new class of metal‐free photocatalyst, displaying semiconductor‐like photoelectric properties and showing excellent performance in a wide variety of photoelectrochemical and photocatalytic applications owing to their ease of synthesis, unique structure, adjustable composition, ease of surface functionalization, outstanding electron‐transfer efficiency and tunable light‐harvesting range (from deep UV to the near‐infrared). Here, recent advances in the rational design of CDs‐based photocatalysts are highlighted and their applications in photocatalytic environmental remediation, water splitting into hydrogen, CO₂ reduction, and organic synthesis are discussed.     

低逾渗MWCNTs-CB/UHMWPE导电复合材料的制备及性能

采用溶液法及机械共混法分别制备了均匀结构的炭黑(CB)/超高分子量聚乙烯(UHMWPE)及隔离结构的多壁碳纳米管(MWCNTs)-CB/UHMWPE复合薄膜。扫描电镜分析显示,虽然大部分CB均匀分散于UHMWPE基体中,但依然存在明显的局部团聚,而隔离结构中的MWCNTs-CB分布于UHMWPE界面间,更易形成导电通道。导电测试结果表明,复合材料的导电逾渗值由均匀分布的4.91%(体积分数)下降到隔离结构的0.42%。MWCNTs的加入完善了CB间的导电网络,使复合材料的逾渗值进一步下降,当CB∶MWCNTs=15∶1时,复合薄膜的逾渗值由0.42%(体积分数)下降到0.24%,然而混合填料中MWCNTs含量的进一步增加几乎对逾渗值没有影响。力学性能研究表明,隔离型复合材料的拉伸强度和断裂伸长率随填充剂含量的增加呈现出先上升后下降的趋势。