A review of high-performance carbon nanotube-based carbon fibers

Abstract With the growing importance of high-performance carbon fibers (CFs), researches have been conducted in many applications such as aerospace, automobile and battery. Since conventional CFs which were made from polyacrylonitrile, pitch and cellulose display either high tensile strength or high modulus properties due to structural limitations, it has been a challenge to develop CFs with both tensile strength and modulus with high conductivity. Therefore, various studies have been conducted to obtain high-performance multifunctional CFs. Among them, 1-dimensional carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been used commonly to make CFs because of high mechanical and conducting properties. In this review, the recent development of CFs was introduced briefly, and CNT-based composite CFs were introduced. Many efforts are being made to create high-performance CFs by combining various carbon nanomaterials and polymers, which can have potential to be utilized in aerospace, defense and other industries. The those fibers may be nextgeneration high-performance fibers due to both high strength and high modulus as well as high conducting properties. The challenges and outlook for commercialization of CNT-based CFs are addressed in terms of aspect ratio of CNTs, solvent recycling, and mass-production.