Browsing by Author "Robinson, J. W. A."

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    Photonic sorting of aligned, crystalline carbon nanotube textiles
    (Nature Publishing Group, 2017-10-11) Bulmer, John S.; Gspann, Thurid S.; Orozco, Francisco; Sparkes, Martin; Koerner, Hilmar; Di Bernardo, A.; Niemiec, Arkadiusz; Robinson, J. W. A.; Koziol, Krzysztof K. K.; Elliott, James A.; O’Neill, William
    Floating catalyst chemical vapor deposition uniquely generates aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) textiles with individual CNT lengths magnitudes longer than competing processes, though hindered by impurities and intrinsic/extrinsic defects. We present a photonic-based post-process, particularly suited for these textiles, that selectively removes defective CNTs and other carbons not forming a threshold thermal pathway. In this method, a large diameter laser beam rasters across the surface of a partly aligned CNT textile in air, suspended from its ends. This results in brilliant, localized oxidation, where remaining material is an optically transparent film comprised of few-walled CNTs with profound and unique improvement in microstructure alignment and crystallinity. Raman spectroscopy shows substantial D peak suppression while preserving radial breathing modes. This increases the undoped, specific electrical conductivity at least an order of magnitude to beyond that of single-crystal graphite. Cryogenic conductivity measurements indicate intrinsic transport enhancement, opposed to simply removing nonconductive carbons/residual catalyst.