Identifying the Commercialization Path of Novel Carbon Nanofibers for Enhanced Structural Composites and Energy Storage
Abstract
The market for various types of nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and carbon nanofibers (CNFs), is growing at a staggering rate; the market for CNTs alone is estimated to be $670 million in 2019. This is due to a combination of remarkable properties of these nanomaterials, such as exceptional strength, which brings hope for new composites with superior performance metrics. However, major limitations exist in commercialization of nanomaterials, such as extremely prohibitive costs (e.g., the cost of CNTs can be 10-100x that of carbon fibers), extremely limited capabilities to generate continuous strands of nanofibers and nanotubes (as required to weave them into fabrics for more elaborate design of composites), and poor controllability over their microstructure (inherent in CVD production methods). We believe we have developed a form of CNFs which can overcome the above limitations by introducing continuous bundles of CNFs with significant control over the microstructure and geometry, all facilitated via proprietary and scalable processing methods. By controlling theprocessing parameters, we have managed to develop CNFs with a variety of forms: highly graphitic, wavy, hollow and porous. We believe that this technology has the potential to compete in two somewhat distinct product segments: carbon fiber/carbon nanofiber and carbon nanotube. Though fibers and tubes have somewhat different property sets, they can compete in the same markets. With the premise of reduced production cost and a unique set of properties (high aspect ratio, continuous strands, controllable properties such as strength reaching as high as 7-10 GPa, and electrical conductivity of 104 S/m), our goal in this funded work is to study the market potentials of our CNFs and to evaluate a specific market approach providing tailored fiber offerings to areas such as structural composites and energy storage.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Nov 30, 2019
- Accession Number
- AD1113906
Entities
People
- John Beckerdite
- Mohammad Naraghi
- Yijun Chen
Organizations
- Texas Engineering Experiment Station