Polycrystalline morphology and mechanical strength of nanotube fibers
Abstract
Correlating mechanical performance with mesoscale structure is fundamental for the design and optimization of light and strong fibers (or any composites), most promising being those from carbon nanotubes. In all forms of nanotube fiber production strategies, due to tubes’ mutual affinity, some degree of bundling into liquid crystal-like domains can be expected, causing heterogeneous load transfer within and outside these domains, and having a direct impact on the fiber strength. By employing large-scale coarse-grained simulations, we demonstrate that the strengthsof nanotube fibers with characteristic domain sizeDscales ass ~ 1/D, while the degree of longitudinal/axial disorder within the domains (akin to a smectic ↔ nematic phase transition) can substantially mitigate this dependence.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Jan 27, 2022
- Source ID
- 10.1038/s41524-022-00705-x
Entities
People
- Boris I Yakobson
- Evgeni S Penev
- Nitant Gupta
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research