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Carbon nanotubes for lighter and more resistant conductive fibers

They have developed a new conductive material made with carbon nanotubes with three properties that are not common at the same time: good conductivity, low weight and high mechanical resistance. The work has been published in Science and one of its authors is Valentín Vassilev-Galindo, researcher at the University of Navarra.

Carbon nanotubes, tubes that are thousands of times thinner than a hair, conduct electricity very well individually. But the challenge is to maintain this ability by joining millions of carbon nanotubes to manufacture a real fiber, that is, a material that can be used outside the laboratory. This work shows a way forward in this direction.

The researchers have worked with fibers composed of double-walled carbon nanotubes that have incorporated an aluminum and chlorine compound. This changes the electronic behavior of the material and improves its ability to conduct electric current. The result is a fiber that can have a conductivity of up to 24.5 million times per meter, 41% of the conductivity of copper.

However, they have explained that the most important data is not only the conductivity of this material, but also the conductivity with respect to weight. In fact, copper carries more electricity compared to this new material of the same volume. However, since these fibers weigh much less, the result varies with the mass. According to the article, for every kilo of material, these fibers can transport electricity more efficiently than copper or aluminum.

This is important because in many technical applications weight is as important as conductivity. A lighter material may be particularly useful in cables, power systems or devices where mass reduction helps to improve performance. In fact, the new material weighs half of the conventional cables. And, in addition, these fibers are five times more resistant.

On the other hand, it has been found that the fibers are stable under dry conditions and that if they are protected from moisture with polymeric coatings they have a conductivity close to 80%. According to the researchers, it allows the development of lighter conductors than the current one for applications where materials, weight and resistance are important.