Press releases
Please quote Nature Materials as the source of these items.
February 2004
Strong nanotube fibres
Single-walled carbon nanotubes are the strongest materials known. But translating their spectacular mechanical properties into macroscopic nanotube fibres is not a simple task. Laszlo Forro and colleagues have now shown that a huge increase in strength can be achieved by irradiation of nanotube bundles with high-energy electrons. In the March issue of Nature Materials, the researchers report a 30-fold increase in strength, up to 70% of the value observed for isolated single-walled nanotubes.
Carbon nanotube bundles are held together only by a weak van der Waals interaction, and the tubes can easily slide over each other when subjected to a mechanical force. Forro and colleagues devised a way of introducing stable crosslinks between the nanotubes making up the bundles. The crosslinks are introduced by moderate electron beam irradiation in a transmission electron microscope, and effectively eliminate nanotube sliding.
This study should have significant impact on the processing of ultra-strong nanotube-based structures. Nanotubes can already be grown in large aligned ropes, and could then be crosslinked to improve the mechanical properties. Initial simulations indicate that ion irradiation could be used as an alternative to electron irradiation for large-scale processing.
