Continuous binder-free fibers of pure imogolite nanotubes
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Published version
Author(s)
Moore, Joe
Paineau, Erwan
Launois, Pascale
Shaffer, Milo
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Imogolite nanotubes display a range of useful properties and provide an ideal material system to study the assembly of nanomaterials into macroscopic fibers. A method of wet spinning pure, binder-free imogolite fibers has been developed using double walled germanium imogolite nanotubes. Nanotube aspect ratio can be controlled during the initial synthesis and is critical to the spinning process. Fibers made from short nanotubes (<100 nm) have very low gel strengths, whilst dopes with longer nanotubes (500-1000 nm) are readily spinnable. The tensile behaviour of the resulting imogolite nanotube fibers is strongly influenced by relative humidity (RH), with a modulus of 30 GPa at 10% RH compared to 2.8 GPa at 85% RH, as well as a change in failure mode. This result highlights the importance of inter nanotube interactions in such assemblies and provides a useful strategy for further exploration. Interestingly, in the absence of a matrix phase, a degree of misorientation appears to improve load transfer between the individual INTs within the porous fiber, likely due to an increase of the number of inter-particle contacts. Imogolite nanotubes are an appealing analogue to other nanotube fiber systems, and it is hoped that learnings from this system can also be used to improve carbon nanotube fibers.
Date Issued
2021-04-21
Date Acceptance
2021-03-26
Citation
ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, 2021, 13 (15), pp.17940-17947
ISSN
1944-8244
Publisher
American Chemical Society
Start Page
17940
End Page
17947
Journal / Book Title
ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces
Volume
13
Issue
15
Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society. This is an open access article under a CC-BY Attribution Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
License URL
Sponsor
Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL)
Grant Number
DSTLX1000126679
Subjects
nanotube
fiber
imogolite
alignment
humidity
jamming
spinning
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2021-04-08