Jianli Kang

Achieving highly dispersed nanofibres at high loading in carbon nanofibre-metal composites

In order to tap into the advantages of the properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) or carbon nanofibres (CNFs) in composites, the high dispersion of CNTs (or CNFs) and strong interfacial bonding are the key issues which are still challenging. In the current work, a novel approach, consisting of in situ synthesis of CNFs within the Cu powders and mixing Cu ions with the in situ CNF(Ni/Y)-Cu composite powders in a solvent, was developed to highly disperse CNFs in a Cu matrix. The composite, produced by vacuum hot pressing, shows extremely high strength, 3.6 times more than that of the matrix material alone. It is worth mentioning that this method can disperse CNFs at high loading in a metal matrix, inferring good potential for applications, such as electronic packaging materials.

Study of Mg powder as catalyst carrier for the carbon nanotube growth by CVD

The possibility of using magnesium powder as catalyst carrier for carbon nanotube growth by chemical vapor deposition, which may pave a new way to in situ fabricate CNT/Mg composites with high CNT dispersion, was investigated for the first time. The fabrication process of the catalyst supported on Mg powder involves the preparation of colloid by a deposition-precipitation method, followed by calcination and reduction. The results show that the interaction between catalyst and support plays an important role for the catalytic property of the catalyst. Ni alloyed with Mg shows no activity for the decomposition of methane. The introduction of Y in Ni/Mg catalyst can promote the reaction temperature between Ni and Mg and thus enhance the activity of the catalyst. A large amount of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with an average diameter of 20 nm was obtained using Ni/Y/Mg catalyst at 450°C, while only a few short CNTs were obtained using Ni/Mg catalyst due to the low activity of the catalyst at lower temperature.