TY - JOUR
T1 - Densification of single-walled carbon nanotube films
T2 - Mesoscopic distinct element method simulations and experimental validation
AU - Drozdov, Grigorii
AU - Ostanin, Igor
AU - Xu, Hao
AU - Wang, Yuezhou
AU - Dumitricǎ, Traian
AU - Grebenko, Artem
AU - Tsapenko, Alexey P.
AU - Gladush, Yuriy
AU - Ermolaev, Georgy
AU - Volkov, Valentyn S.
AU - Eibl, Sebastian
AU - Rüde, Ulrich
AU - Nasibulin, Albert G.
PY - 2020/11/14
Y1 - 2020/11/14
N2 - Nanometer-thin single-walled carbon nanotube (CNT) films collected from the aerosol chemical deposition reactors have gathered attention for their promising applications. Densification of these pristine films provides an important way to manipulate mechanical, electronic, and optical properties. To elucidate the underlying microstructural level restructuring, which is ultimately responsible for the change in properties, we perform large scale vector-based mesoscopic distinct element method simulations in conjunction with electron microscopy and spectroscopic ellipsometry characterization of pristine and densified films by drop-cast volatile liquid processing. Matching with the microscopy observations, pristine CNT films with a finite thickness are modeled as self-assembled CNT networks comprising entangled dendritic bundles with branches extending down to individual CNTs. Simulations of these films under uniaxial compression uncover a soft deformation regime extending up to an ∼75% strain. When removing the loads, the pre-compressed samples evolve into homogeneously densified films with thickness values depending on both the pre-compression level and the sample microstructure. The significant reduction in thickness is attributed to the underlying structural changes occurring at the 100 nm scale, including the zipping of the thinnest dendritic branches.
AB - Nanometer-thin single-walled carbon nanotube (CNT) films collected from the aerosol chemical deposition reactors have gathered attention for their promising applications. Densification of these pristine films provides an important way to manipulate mechanical, electronic, and optical properties. To elucidate the underlying microstructural level restructuring, which is ultimately responsible for the change in properties, we perform large scale vector-based mesoscopic distinct element method simulations in conjunction with electron microscopy and spectroscopic ellipsometry characterization of pristine and densified films by drop-cast volatile liquid processing. Matching with the microscopy observations, pristine CNT films with a finite thickness are modeled as self-assembled CNT networks comprising entangled dendritic bundles with branches extending down to individual CNTs. Simulations of these films under uniaxial compression uncover a soft deformation regime extending up to an ∼75% strain. When removing the loads, the pre-compressed samples evolve into homogeneously densified films with thickness values depending on both the pre-compression level and the sample microstructure. The significant reduction in thickness is attributed to the underlying structural changes occurring at the 100 nm scale, including the zipping of the thinnest dendritic branches.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096138508&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1063/5.0025505
DO - 10.1063/5.0025505
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85096138508
SN - 0021-8979
VL - 128
JO - Journal of Applied Physics
JF - Journal of Applied Physics
IS - 18
M1 - 184701
ER -