• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.539-540
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• 2010

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.203-204
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• 2008

Using various surfactants, multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWNT) was dispersed in organic solvent, isopropylalcohol(IPA). To refine the MWNT and give the functional group, MWNT was treated with sulfuric acid/nitric acid(v/v=3/1). The cationic, nonionic and anionic surfactants were used as MWNT dispersion agents in the organic solvent. Dispersion effect of various surfactants was observed by optical microscope and HR-TEM. Surface resistivities of MWNT dispersions were measured after coating on PET film. MWNT was dispersed well by poly vinyl pyrrolidone(PVP), nonionic surfactant.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.65-69
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• 2011

Objectives: Carbon nanotubes are an important new class of technological materials that have numerous novel and useful properties. Multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs), which is a nanomaterial, is now in mass production because of its excellent mechanical and electrical properties. Although MWCNTs appear to have great industrial and medical potential, there is little information regarding their toxicological effects on researchers and workers who could be exposed to them by inhalation during the handling of MWCNTs. Methods: The generation of an untangled MWCNT aerosol with a consistent concentration without using surfactants that was designed to be tested in in vivo inhalation toxicity testing was attempted. To do this, MWCNTs were dispersed in deionized water without the addition of any surfactant. To facilitate the dispersion of MWCNTs in deionized water, the water was heated to $40^{\circ}C$, $60^{\circ}C$, and $80^{\circ}C$ depending on the sample with ultrasonic sonication. Then the dispersed MWCNTs were atomized to generate the MWCNT aerosol. After aerosolization of the MWCNTs, the shapes of the NTs were examined by transmission electron microscopy. Results: The aerosolized MWCNTs exhibited an untangled shape and the MWCNT generation rate was about 50 $mg/m^3$. Conclusion: Our method provided sufficient concentration and dispersion of MWNCTs to be used for inhalation toxicity testing.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.991-994
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• 2006

Herein, insoluble single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) was successfully dispersed into water in the presence of a special kind of surfactant-dicetyl phosphate (DCP), subsequently, a SWNT-DCP composite film coated glassy carbon electrode (GCE) was fabricated. The electrochemical behaviors of 6-benzylaminopurine (6-BAP) at the unmodified GCE and SWNT-DCP modified GCE were examined. It is found that the SWNT-DCP modified GCE remarkably enhances the oxidation peak current of 6-BAP, indicating great potential in the determination of trace level of 6-BAP. Finally, a sensitive and simple voltammetric method with a good linear relationship in the range of ${\times}5.0\;\;10^{-8}\sim 2.5\;{\times}\;10^{-6}$ mol/L, was developed for the determination of 6-BAP. The detection limit is as low as $2.0\;{\times}\;10^{-8}$ mol/L for 3-min accumulation. This newly-proposed method was successfully demonstrated with practical samples.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.153-153
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• 2008

Practical application of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) qualified as a promising material has been limited by either poor dispersion or their insolubility in aqueous or organic media due to formation of bundling by relatively high surface energy. Thus, major attention to overcome this issue has been paid at surface modification of CNTs by functionalization, but this introduces defects to the sidewall of CNTs, consequently perturbing the inherent electronic and optical properties. Therefore, using surfactants is a general approach to disperse SWCNTs with lower damages by which bundled nanotubes could be dispersed up to the level of individuals or small bundles. Here, we have investigated various surfactants for their efficiency in dissolving purified SWCNTs produced by arc discharge in deionized water. To compare the surfactants respectively, we have determined the least amount of each surfactant to suspend the nanotubes under optimized experimental conditions(CNT amount, sonication power, and centrifugation speed, etc.) set on the basis of the most common surfactant (sodium dodecyl sulfate, SDS) and discussed the qualitative and quantitative characterization of SWCNT dispersions by UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy. Quantitative aspect about nanotube dispersion was that in particular N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP) and sodium dodecylbenzene sulfonate (NaDDBS) were found to be effective in dispersing individual tubes.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.417-417
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• 2009

Although a transparent conductive film (TCF) belongs to essential supporting materials for many device applications such as touch screens, flat panel displays, and sensors, a conventional transparent conductive material, indium-tin oxide (ITO), suffers from considerable drawback because the price of indium has soared since 2001. Despite a recent falloff, a demand of ITO is expected to increase sharply in the future due to the trend of flat panel display technologies toward flexible, paper-like features. There have been recently extensive studies to replace ITO with new materials, in particular, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) since CNTs possess excellent properties such as flexibility, electrical conductivity, optical transparency, mechanical strength, etc., which are prerequisite to TCFs. This study fabricated TCFs with single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) produced by arc discharge. The SWCNTs were dispersed in water with a surfactant of sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (NaDDBS) under sonication. Carbon black and fullerene nanoparticles were added to the SWCNT-dispersed solution to enhance contact resistance between CNTs. TCFs were manufactured by a filtration and transfer method. TCFs added with carbon black and fullerene nanoparticles were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), UV-vis spectroscopy (optical transmittance), and four-point probe measurement (sheet resistance).

• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.275-283
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• 2007

An experimental study was conducted to investigate the effect of the morphology of CNT (Carbon Nanotube) on the thermal conductivity of suspensions. The effective thermal conductivities of the samples were measured using a steady-state cut bar apparatus method. Enhancements based on the thermal conductivity of the base fluid are presented as functions of both the volume fraction and the temperature. Although functionalized SWNT (Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube) produced more stable and homogeneous suspensions, the addition of small amounts of surfactant to suspensions of 'as produced' SWNT demonstrated a greater increase in effective thermal conductivity than functionalized SWNT alone. The effective thermal conductivity enhancement corresponding to 1.0% by volume approached 10%, which was observed to be lower than expected, but more than twice the values, 3.5%, obtained for similar tests conducted using aluminum oxide suspensions. However, for suspensions of MWNT (Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube), the degree of enhancement was measured to be approximately 37%. It was postulated that the effect of clustering, resulting from the multiple heat-flow passages constituted by interconnecting neighboring CNT clusters, played an important role in significant enhancement of effective thermal conductivity.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.579-585
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• 2012

Polystyrene/carbon nanotube (CNT) microcellular foams were prepared to have electrically conductive properties via high internal phase emulsion polymerization. In this study, we have investigated the effects of surface modification of CNT, surfactant content and dispersion time to improve the stability of emulsion and the electrical conductivity of foam. Acid treatment and a surfactant were used to effectively disperse CNTs in the aqueous phase. In the organic phase, CNTs were used after a surface modification with organic functional groups. The degree of dispersion of CNTs was estimated by the electrical conductivity of resultant microcellular foams. With raw CNTs dispersed with the surfactant in the aqueous phase, substantial conductivity increase was observed but the foams were slightly shrunk. The foams prepared with organically modified CNTs dispersed in the organic phase showed stable cell morphology without shrinkage, but displayed limitation to improve the conductivity.

• 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.

• Polymer(Korea)
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.364-371
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• 2012

Polystyrene/single-walled carbon nanotube (PS/SWCNT) nanocomposites were prepared by latex technology and the effect of surfactant (SDS) on nanotube dispersion, rheological and electrical properties was investigated. The nanocomposites were prepared through freeze-drying after mixing PS particles and aqueous SWCNT/SDS suspension. As the SDS content increased, the storage modulus and complex viscosity of the nanocomposites were increased due to enhanced dispersion of nanotubes, but if the content excessively increased, the modulus and viscosity began to decrease due to low molecular weight of SDS. The electrical conductivity sharply increased with the addition of SDS, and then did not show significant changes. This result is speculated to be the competition between the increased dispersion of nanotubes and the deterioration of electrical conductivity by SDS adsorption. An optimal ratio of SDS to SWCNT for improving electrical conductivity and end-use properties was 2. With this ratio, the electrical percolation threshold of SWCNT was less than 1 wt%.