Fill carbon nanotubes with water and make them stronger!

Abraao Torres-Dias, Denis Machon et Alfonso San Miguel (team (Nano)matériaux pour l'Energie), in collaboration with the University of Antwerppen have published an article entitled "Chirality-dependent mechanical response of empty and water-filled single-wall carbon nanotubes at high pressure" in the journal Carbon.

Thanks to their remarkable resistance to traction, carbon nanotubes are used to reinforce new composite materials. On the other side, an effort of the order of hundred times less important is needed to deform them in the transvers direction. This works shows that it is enough to fill the carbon nanotubes with water to obtain a considerable mechanical strength in all directions. The mechanical response of 18 types of carbon nanotubes filled with water (up to one-file filling) and of the same empty tubes has been compared using high resolution resonant Raman spectroscopy on individualized carbon nanotubes. The study shows that water exerts a counterpressure which allows to greatly enhance the tubes mechanical stability. In that way empty tubes nicely follow theoretical predictions of pressure induced collapse and allow assigning many contradictions between experiments and models found in literature to the nanotubes accidental filling. This work is particularly important on the development and design of new carbon nanotubes based composites.

29/09/2015