Carbon tubes, nano-scale

The concept of toughening on the nano scale is the subject for much current research where particles of, for example, clays, carbon fibre and carbon nano-tubes, are being evaluated as tougheners for brittle, often high-temperature epoxy matrices. In the same way as for polymeric additives, the main difficulties being experienced are those of particle exfoliation, in the case of the clays, and dispersion in the case of the carbon particles. 

Sun, X., Chen, T., Yang, Z., Peng, H., 2013a. The Alignment of carbon nano tubes an effective route to extend their excellent properties to macroscopic scale. Acc. Chem. Res. 46, 539-549. 

Guo, X., Leung, A. Y. T., He, X. Q., Jiang, H. Huang, Y. (2008). Bending Buckling of Single-Walled Carbon Nano tubes by Atomic-Scale Finite Element. Composites PartB, 39. 202-208. 

Since lijima identified carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in 1991, CNTs have been investigated in various fields and become extremely desirable for a wide range of applications. CNTs, with diameters in nanometer scale and a smooth surface may offer a very unique molecular transport through their pores. In fact, several studies in recent years suggest that the water transport through single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNT) would become much faster than the transport rate that the continuum hydrodynamic theory would predict. This was attributed by Molecular Dynamic (MD) simulation to the smoothness of the nano-tube wall [1,2]. 

Cassell, A. M., Raymaakers, J. A., Kong, and Dai, H. [1999). Large scale CVD synthesis of single-walled carbon nano-tubes. J. Phys. Chem. B, 103,6484-6492. 

---