Scalable High Tensile Modulus Composite Laminates Using Continuous Carbon Nanotube Yarns for Aerospace Applications

An approach is establishedfor fabricating high-strength and high-stiffnesscomposite laminates with continuous carbon nanotube (CNT) yarns forscaled-up mechanical tests and potential aerospace structure applications.Continuous CNT yarns with up to 80% degree of nanotube alignment anda unique self-assembled graphitic CNT packing result in their specifictensile strengths of 1.77 +/- 0.07 N/tex and an apparent specificmodulus of 92.6 +/- 3.2 N/tex. Unidirectional CNT yarn reinforcedcomposite laminates with a CNT concentration of greater than 80 wt% and minimal microscale voids are fabricated using filament windingand aerospace-grade resin matrices. A specific tensile strength ofup to 1.71 GPa/(g cm(-3)) and specific modulus of256 GPa/(g cm(-3)) are realized; the specific modulusexceeds current state-of-the-art unidirectional carbon fiber compositelaminates. The specific modulus of the laminates is 2.76 times greaterthan the specific modulus of the constituent CNT yarns, a phenomenonnot observed in carbon fiber reinforced composites. The results demonstratean effective approach for fabricating high-strength CNT yarns intocomposites for applications that require specific tensile modulusproperties that are significantly beyond state-of-the-art carbon fibercomposites and potentially open an unexplored performance region inthe Ashby chart for composite material applications.