Characterization of vertically aligned carbon nanotube forests grown on stainless steel surfaces
Abstract
Vertically aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) forests are a particularly interesting class of nanomaterials, because they combine multifunctional properties, such as high energy absorption, compressive strength, recoverability, and super-hydrophobicity with light weight. These characteristics make them suitable for application as coating, protective layers, and antifouling substrates for metallic pipelines and blades. Direct growth of CNT forests on metals offers the possibility of transferring the tunable CNT functionalities directly onto the desired substrates. Here, we focus on characterizing the structure and mechanical properties, as well as wettability and adhesion, of CNT forests grown on different types of stainless steel. We investigate the correlations between composition and morphology of the steel substrates with the micro-structure of the CNTs and reveal how the latter ultimately controls the mechanical and wetting properties of the CNT forest. Additionally, we study the influence of substrate morphology on the adhesion of CNTs to their substrate. We highlight that the same structure-property relationships govern the mechanical performance of CNT forests grown on steels and on Si.
Additional Information
© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Received: 5 February 2019 / Accepted: 27 February 2019 / Published: 15 March 2019. Author Contributions: Conceptualization, E.R., M.S.-G. and C.D.; methodology E.R., M.S.-G. and C.D.; validation, E.R., M.D., M.S.-G. and P.J.; formal analysis, E.R., M.D., M.S.-G. and P.J.; investigation, E.R., M.D., M.S.-G. and P.J.; resources, G.P. and C.D.; data curation, E.R., M.D., M.S.-G. and P.J.; writing—original draft preparation, E.R., M.D. and C.D.; writing—review and editing, E.R., M.D., M.S.-G., G.P. and C.D.; visualization, E.R.; supervision, E.R. and C.D.; project administration, C.D.; funding acquisition, C.D. This research was part of the "Advanced cnt structures for functional surfaces applications" project co-funded by ALSTOM/GE and Hightech Zentrum Aargau AG. Contact angle and surface roughness measurements were performed at the Molecular Materials Research Center of the Beckman Institute of the California Institute of Technology. The authors would like to thank Dr. Matthew S. Hunt for the HRTEM imaging. The authors declare no conflict of interest.Attached Files
Published - nanomaterials-09-00444.pdf
Submitted - 1809.08278.pdf
Supplemental Material - nanomaterials-09-00444-s001.pdf
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC6474093
- Eprint ID
- 93574
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20190306-105126503
- Alstom/GE
- Hightech Zentrum Aargau AG
- Created
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2019-03-06Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2022-03-01Created from EPrint's last_modified field