• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.343-348
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• 2014

A powder-in-sheath rolling (PSR) process utilizing a copper alloy tube was applied to a fabrication of a multi-walled carbon nanotube (CNT) reinforced aluminum matrix composite. A copper tube with an outer diameter of 30 mm and a wall thickness of 2 mm was used as a sheath material. A mixture of pure aluminum powders and CNTs with the volume contents of 1, 3, 5 vol% was filled in the tube by tap filling and then processed to 93.3% height reduction by a rolling mill. The relative density of the CNT/Al composite fabricated by the PSR decreased slightly with increasing of CNTs content, but showed high value more than 98%. The average hardness of the 5%CNT/Al composite increased more than 3 times, compared to that of unreinforced pure Al powder compaction. The hardness of the CNT/Al composites was some higher than that of the composites fabricated by PSR using SUS304 tube. Therefore, it is concluded that the type of tube affects largely on the mechanical properties of the CNT/Al composites in the PSR process.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.355-360
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• 2012

The characteristics of power generation were investigated by changing the electrical conductivity from 10 to 40mS/cm using air-cathode microbial fuel cell, which had graphite fiber fabric(GFF) anode. There were three kinds of cathode used: one was carbon cloth cathode coated with Pt, another was carbon nanotube(CNT) cathode with non-precious catalyst of Fe-Cu-Mn, and the other was carbon nanotube(CNT) cathode without any catalyst. When it was operated in batch mode, power density of 1369.5mW/$m^2$ was achieved at conductivity of 20mS/cm. Power density from MFC with CNT cathode coated with multi-catalyst of Fe-Cu-Mn was shown about 985.55mW/$m^2$, which was 75.1% compared the power density of carbon cloth coated with Pt. This meant that CNT cathode coated with multi-catalyst of Fe-Cu-Mn could be an alternative of carbon cloth cathode.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.51 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2014

Here we report improved photo-catalytic effect of $Ag_2S$ under visible light using carbon nano-tubes (CNT) modified with $Ag_2S$ nanoparticles. The optical properties, structural properties and compositional analysis, as well as the photo-electrochemical properties of the prepared composites were investigated. It was found that the photocurrent density, and the photo-catalytic effect, was increased by modification of CNT in this way. Compared with the separate effects of $Ag_2S$ and CNT nanoparticles, the photocatalytic effect of CNT-modified-with-$Ag_2S$ composites, increased significantly due to a synergistic effect between the CNT and the $Ag_2S$ nanoparticles.

• 한국정보디스플레이학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.08a
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• pp.1206-1209
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• 2006

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been significantly used for the field emitters for display applications. However, the lifetime of CNT emitters which are formed by screen printing technique is not guaranteed yet, because the constituents in CNT paste affect the lifetime of CNTs. The CNT pastes for screen printing are normally composed of organic vehicles (nitro cellulose, ethyl cellulose, etc) and additives (glass frits, ITO, etc) with CNTs. In this study, the effects of constituents in CNT pastes on the lifetime and emission characteristics of CNTs were investigated by thermal and electrical analysis. Use of glass frits worsened the lifetime and electron emission of CNTs. However, an addition of ITO to CNT paste rather improved the lifetime of CNTs. Degradation of CNTs was small when nitro cellulose was used in CNT paste as an organic vehicle.

• Composites Research
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.269-275
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• 2016

Multiscale hybrid composites, which consist of polymeric resins, microscale fibers and nanoscale reinforcements, have drawn significant attention in the field of advanced, high-performance materials. Despite their advantages, multiscale hybrid composites show challenges associated with nanomaterial dispersion, viscosity, interfacial bonding and load transfer, and orientation control. In this paper, carbon nanotube(CNT)/carbon fiber(CF)/polycarbonate(PC) multiscale hybrid composite were fabricated by a solution process to overcome the difficulties associated with controlling the melt viscosity of thermoplastic resins. The dependence of CNT loading was studied by varying the method to add CNTs, i.e., impregnation of CF with CNT/PC/solvent solution and impregnation of CNT-coated CF with PC/solvent solution. In addition, hybrid composites were fabricated through surfactant-aided CNT dispersion followed by vacuum filtration. The morphologies of the surfaces of hybrid composites, as analyzed by scanning electron microscopy, revealed the quality of PC impregnation depends on the processing method. Dynamic mechanical analysis was performed to evaluate their mechanical performance. It was analyzed that if the position of the value of tan ${\delta}$ is closer to the ideal line, the adhesion between polymer and carbon fiber is stronger. The effect of mechanical interlocking has a great influence on the dynamic mechanical properties of the composites with CNT-coated CF, which indicates that coating CF with CNTs is a suitable method to fabricate CNT/CF/PC hybrid composites.

• Carbon letters
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.181-187
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• 2005

Bipolar plates require some specific properties such as electrical conductivity, mechanical strength, chemical stability, and low permeability for the fuel cell application. This study investigated the effects of carbon nanotube (CNT) contents and process conditions of hot press molding on the electrical and physical properties using CNT 3~7 wt% added graphite nano-composites in the curing temperatures range of 140~$200^{\circ}C$ and pressure of 200~300 kg/$cm^2$. Bulk density, hardness and flexural strength increased with increasing CNT contents, curing pressure and temperature. With the 7 wt% CNT added noncomposite, the electrical resistance improved by 30% and the flexural strength increased by 25% as compared to that without CNT at the temperature of $160^{\circ}C$ and pressure of 300 kg/$cm^2$. These properties were close to the DOE reference criteria as bulk resistance of 13 $m{\Omega}cm$ and tensile strength of 515 kg/$cm^2$.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2006

Carbon nanotube cathodes (CNT cathodes) were fabricated by a screen printing method using multi-walled carbon nanotubes. The effects of surface treatment on CNT cathodes were investigated for use in high efficiency field emission displays. The optimum surface treatment for a CNT cathode is dependent on a relative bonding force of CNT films on the cathode after a heat treatment. Because of the high bonding force used in the Liquid method, this method is recommended for CNT cathodes which are heat-treated at $390^{\circ}C$ in a $N_2$ atmosphere. The Rolling method is applicable for CNT cathodes fabricated at $350^{\circ}C$ in an atmosphere of air. The results of this study provide basic criteria for the selection of an appropriate surface treatment for large area CNT cathodes.

• Proceeding of EDISON Challenge
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• 2015.03a
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• pp.304-307
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• 2015

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been widely accepted and used as the enhancer for polymer nano-composites due to their remarkable mechanical properties. Understandably, the CNT fiber-polymer matrix interface plays a major role in determining the properties of the CNT-polymer nano-composites. Here, using the LCAODFT Lab tool available on the EDISON Nano-Physics site, we performed first-principles density-functional theory calculations to determine the atomic configurations and binding energies of the CNTs in contact with polymers. For the polymer matrixes, we chose poly(acrylonitrile) (PAN), which is one of the most well-known polymer matrixes for the carbon nanofiber nanocomposites. Different chiralities and diameters of pristine CNTs were considered, and several PAN-CNT configurations were prepared based on the atomistic positions and directions of cyano group in PAN. The most favorable configuration of PAN was obtained when the PAN bound parallel to the surface of CNT. Our finding indicates the binding configurations are determined by the direction of the cyano group dominantly rather than the atomistic position of PAN, or the symmetry of CNTs. The result of increasing the length of CNT diameter suggests that PAN is inclinable to align evenly on the surface of relatively large size of CNT with the configuration parallel to the surface. These results obtained in this study will provide the starting point for the design of improved PAN-CNT composites for the next-generation ultra-strong and ultra-light carbon nanofibers.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.267-272
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• 2012

Considering the properties of the carbon nano tubes (CNT), their inclusion into the polymer matrix vastly increases the properties of the resultant composite. However, this is not the case due to the poor interfacial adhesion of the CNT and the polymer matrix. The present approach focuses on increasing the interaction between the polymer matrix and the CNT through the chemical modification of the CNT resulting in allyl ester functionalized carbon nanotubes (ACNT) and silane functionalized carbon nano tubes (SCNT) which are capable of reacting with the polymer matrix during the curing reaction. The addition of ACNT/SCNT into unsaturated polyester resin (UPR) resulted in the improvement of the electrical properties of resulted nanocomposites in comparison to the CNT. The surface resistivity, volume resistivity, dielectric strength, dry arc resistivity, and the comparative tracking index of the nanocomposites were significantly improved in comparison to CNT. The chemical modification of CNT was confirmed via spectroscopy.

• Carbon letters
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.336-342
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• 2010

Different oxidation treatments on CNTs using diluted 4.0 M $H_2SO_4$ solution at room temperature and or at $90^{\circ}C$ reflux conditions were investigated to elucidate the physical and chemical changes occurring on the treated CNTs, which might have significant effects on their performance as catalyst supports in PEM fuel cells. Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscope analyses were made for the acid treated CNTs to determine the particle size and distribution of the CNT-supported Pt-Ru nanoparticles. These CNT-supported Pt-based nanoparticles were then employed as anode catalysts in PEMFC to investigate their catalytic activity and single-cell performance towards $H_2$ oxidation. Based on PEMFC performance results, refluxed Pt-Ru/CNT catalysts prepared using CNTs treated at $90^{\circ}C$ for 0.5 h as anode have shown better catalytic activity and PEMFC polarization performance than those of the commercially available Pt-Ru/C catalyst from ETEK and other Pt-Ru/CNT catalysts developed using raw CNT, thus demonstrating the importance of acid treatment in improving and optimizing the surface properties of catalyst support.