Electrical behaviour of native cellulose nanofibril/carbon nanotube hybrid aerogels under cyclic compression

Miao Wang; Ilya V Anoshkin; Albert G Nasibulin; Robin H A Ras; Nonappa; Janne Laine; Esko I Kauppinen; Olli Ikkala

doi:10.1039/c6ra16202a

Electrical behaviour of native cellulose nanofibril/carbon nanotube hybrid aerogels under cyclic compression

RSC Adv. 2016 Sep 19;6(92):89051-89056. doi: 10.1039/c6ra16202a. Epub 2016 Sep 5.

Authors

Miao Wang¹, Ilya V Anoshkin¹, Albert G Nasibulin^{1

2

3}, Robin H A Ras¹, Nonappa¹, Janne Laine⁴, Esko I Kauppinen¹, Olli Ikkala¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Applied Physics , School of Science , Aalto University , P. O. Box 15100 , FI-00076 Espoo , Finland . Email: olli.ikkala@aalto.fi.
² Skolkovo Insititute of Science and Technology , Nobel str. 3 , Moscow , 143026 , Russia.
³ Saint-Petersburg State Polytechnical University , Department of Material Science , Polytechnicheskaya 29 , 195251 , Saint-Petersburg , Russia.
⁴ Department of Forest Products Technology , School of Chemical Technology , Aalto University , P. O. Box 16300 , FI-00076, Espoo , Finland.

Abstract

Hybrid aerogels consisting of cellulose nanofibers (CNF) and modified few-walled carbon nanotubes (FWCNT) are investigated under cyclic mechanical compression to explore "electrical fatigue". For this purpose the FWCNTs were hydrophilized, thus promoting their aqueous dispersibility to allow FWCNT/CNF hybrid hydrogels, followed by freeze-drying to obtain hybrid aerogels. The optimized composition consisting of FWCNT/CNF 20/80 wt/wt showed conductivity of 10^-5 S cm^-1 as promoted due to double percolation, and showed only small changes in electrical and mechanical behaviour upon cycling 100 times. The electrical behaviour under cycled compression shows good stability and reversibility.