Carbon Nanofibers: High‐Ampacity Power Cables of Tightly‐Packed and Aligned Carbon Nanotubes (Adv. Funct. Mater. 21/2014)

Due to their high electrical and thermal conductivity and structural stability, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) can carry very high electrical currents before failure. On page 3241, J. Kono and team report a fiber consisting of tightly packed and well aligned CNTs. This fiber displays the highest current-carrying capacity (CCC) ever reported for a CNT power cable. When normalized by mass, the CCC value of the CNT cable largely surpasses copper wire, making the CNT cable promising for lightweight power transmission, such as in aerospace systems.