Fabrication and Transfer of Aligned Carbon Nanotube-Polymer Nanostructures

Composite films of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have important applications in functional devices such as sensors and conductive membranes. Aligned CNTs, with the ordered structure, offer unique advantages in collective manipulation and easy integration of nanotubes into such devices. We report a novel method to fabricate aligned CNT-polymer nanostructures. This method allows transferring of the aligned CNTs from the original silicon substrates to target substrates via a flip-over technique. The nanotube alignment in the polymer-nanotube nanostructures was well retained. In addition, the transferred polymer-nanotube nanostructure is electrically conductive and mechanically strong, with a conductivity of 76.7 siemens/cm, an elastic modulus enhancement of 650% and a hardness increase of 750% over the original polymer. Characterizations using SEM, TEM, and FT-IR indicated uniform polymer nanocoatings covering each individual CNTs. The polymer-nanotube nanostructures also demonstrate outstanding stability during wetting and drying processes because of the robustness and rigidity provided by the polymer.