Hua Fan1, Richard Booker1, Nicholas Parra-Vasquez2, Zheyi Chen1, Robert H. Hauge1, Wen-Fang Wheng1, Matteo Pasquali2, and Richard E. Smalley3. (1) Smalley Institute, Rice University, 6100 Main Street MS 362, Houston, TX 77005, (2) Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Rice University, 6100 Main Street MS 362, Houston, TX 77005, (3) Department of Chemistry, Auburn University, 230 Ross Hall, Auburn, AL 36849-5127
We report progress on our efforts of converting purified single wall carbon nanotubes (SWNT) into continous fibers. This process is key to the eventual development of the Armchair Quantum Wire (AQW), a continuous wire of perfectly aligned, neat, all-metallic, armchair SWNTs. The AQW will be invaluable for the next generation aerospace application, electric propulsion and power distribution applications. Purified neat SWNTs in the form of bucky pearls are disentangled with a new process to prepare a starting material which is easier to mix and yields better aligned SWNTs fibers. We introduce a new process of co-extrusion of SWNTs and rigid rod polymers to further align the SWNTs in the core by drawing of a co-flowing sheath of polymer solution. This process preserves the electrical conductivity of SWNTs because the SWNTs and the polymers do not intermix, at the same time, the polymeric sheath provides additional mechanical support.