Polymer-Carbon Nanotube Composites

Introduction to polymer–carbon nanotube composites

T. Mcnally,     Queen’s University Belfast, UK

P. Pötschke,     Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden, Germany

It is now well accepted that tubular structures of carbon, or carbon nanotubes (CNTs) existed for some time prior to their clear identification using microscopic techniques by Iijima in 1991 (Iijima, 1991) and to the subsequent reports on the predicted electronic structure of a fullerene tubule and large-scale synthesis of multi-walled CNTs (MWCNTs) in 1992 (Ebbesen and Ajayan, 1992; Mintmire et al., 1992), and the synthesis of single-walled CNTs (SWCNTs) by two independent groups the following year (Bethune et al., 1993; Iijima and Ichihashi, 1993). Raudushkevish and Lukyanovich ...