Technique to make nano carbon tubes buried inside rubber composite visible using femtosecond pulse laser ablation

A method to observe the dispersion structure of carbon nanotubes buried inside a molding composite is described in this communication. The idea is that by utilizing the difference in ablation temperature between the tubes and the composite material, only the composite material, which has a lower ablation temperature, is ablated and buried tubes appear. This was applied to a rubber composite mixed with vapor-grown carbon fibers. A 150-fs pulse laser was prepared as an ablation source. In the ablation images observed with a field-emission secondary electron microscope, linear tubes, clusters, and connections of the tubes could be easily found in their original state.