Structure and Properties of Carbon Nanotube Reinforced Nanocomposites

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) possess many unique characteristics that promise to revolutionize the world of structural ma-terials resulting in significant impact on our capability to build lighter, smaller and higher performance structures for aerospace and many other industrial ap-plications. When the CNT are aligned, micromechanical studies showed the po-tential of an order of magnitude increase in mechanical properties comparing to the state of the art carbon fiber rein-forced composites. The co-electrospinning process is introduced as a pathway to realize this potential by aligning and carrying the CNT in the form of nanocomposite fibrils; thus forming the precursor for linear, planar and 3D fiber assemblies for macrocom-posites. In this study, SWNT were puri-fied and dispersed in polyacrylonitrile solution for co-electrospinning into nanocomposite fibrils. The structure, composition and physical properties of these composite fibrils were character-ized by Raman spectroscopy, TEM, AFM, and TGA. Key words