Strong and Tough TPU Fibers with Orientedly Aligned CNTs Reinforced by Amorphous ZrO2

High strength and high toughness are vital for fibers’ engineering applications, but are hard to simultaneously achieve. Herein, we synthesize a carbon nanotube(CNT)-thermoplastic polyurethanes(TPU) fiber reinforced by an amorphous ZrO2 layer through the wet-spinning method. The amorphous ZrO2 layer is in-situ grown on the surface of CNT and the hybrid nanowires are orientedly aligned with TPU to form the ternary fiber. The fiber possesses an excellent combination of high strength(84.6 MPa) and toughness(126.7 MJ/m3), which is outstanding when compared with previously reported CNT-TPU fibers. The pull-out of nanowires attributed to the oriented alignment structure and the enhanced interface and restriction of deformation obtained from the amorphous ZrO2 layer are considered as the primary strengthening and toughening mechanisms. We anticipate that our fiber synthesis strategy gives a new path to design strong and tough fibers.