Clothing polymer fibers with well-aligned and high-aspect ratio carbon nanotubes

It is believed that the crucial step towards preparation of electrical conductive polymer-carbon nanotube (CNT) composites is dispersing CNTs with a high length-to-diameter aspect ratio in a well-aligned manner. However, this process is extremely challenging when dealing with long and entangled CNTs. Here in this study, a new approach is demonstrated to fabricate conductive polymer-CNT composite fibers without involving any dispersion process. Well-aligned CNT films were firstly drawn from CNT arrays, and then directly coated on polycaprolactone fibers to form polymer-CNT composite fibers. The conductivity of these composite fibers can be as high as 285 S m^-1 with only 2.5 wt% CNT loading, and reach 1549 S m^-1 when CNT loading is 13.4 wt%. As-prepared composite fibers also exhibit 82% retention of conductivity at a strain of 7%, and have improved mechanical properties.