Application of Few-walled carbon nanotube powder in electronic devices and sensors
Field emission: nanometer-scale emission tips, large aspect ratio, high strength, high toughness, good thermal stability and conductivity make carbon nanotubes an ideal field emission material, which is expected to be used in many fields such as cold emission electron guns and flat panel displays.
Japan has produced a color TV prototype of this type of technology, and its image resolution is impossible to achieve with other known technologies. Compared with traditional electron guns, electron guns made of carbon nanotubes are not only stable and easy to make in the air, but also have lower operating voltage and large emission current, which are suitable for manufacturing large flat panel displays.
Using highly directional single-walled carbon nanotubes as electron sending materials can not only make the screen image clearer, but also shorten the distance between electrons and the screen, making it possible to manufacture thinner wall-mounted TVs.
New electron probe: carbon nanotubes have a large aspect ratio, nanoscale tips, and high modulus, making them ideal electron probe materials. Not easy to break: even if they collide with the surface of the observed object, carbon nanotubes are not easy to break, and carbon nanotubes can make soft contact with the observed object.
High flexibility: The cage-like carbon mesh structure of carbon nanotubes can enter the depressions on the rough surface of the observed object. It can better show the surface morphology and state of the observed object, and has good reproducibility.
Using carbon nanotubes as probes for this type of electron microscope can not only extend the service life of the probe, but also greatly improve the resolution of the microscope. In particular, it expands the application of probe-type microscopes such as atomic force microscopes in the observation and characterization of protein and biological macromolecular structures.
Supercapacitor: Porous carbon not only has a wide distribution of micropores (less than 30% of the pores contribute to energy storage), but also has low crystallinity, poor conductivity, and small capacity. Carbon nanotubes have high crystallinity, good conductivity, large specific surface area, and micropore size can be controlled through the synthesis process. The specific surface utilization rate can reach 100%, and the supercapacitor limit capacity has suddenly increased by 3-4 orders of magnitude, and the cycle life is more than 10,000 times (the service life exceeds 5 years). It has extremely important and broad application prospects in mobile communications, information technology, electric vehicles, aerospace, and national defense science and technology.
Sensor: After carbon nanotubes absorb certain gases, their conductivity changes significantly, so carbon nanotubes can be made into gas sensors to detect and alarm gases. By filling carbon nanotubes with light-sensitive, moisture-sensitive, pressure-sensitive and other materials, they can also be made into various nano-scale functional sensors. Nanotube sensors will be a huge industry.