Single-wall carbon nanotube fiber non-woven fabrics with a high electrothermal heating response
Xinyu Jiao, Lele Xu, Xinyang Sun, Chao Shi, Peng‐Xiang Hou, Chang Liu, Hui–Ming Cheng
Abstract
Carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers have great promise for constructing multifunctional fabrics with high electrical conductivity, good electro-heating ability, excellent flexibility, and a low density. However, the inter-fiber contacts in the fabric greatly reduce these advantages and limit their application. Herein, a simple pressure-fusing method to fabricate single-wall CNT (SWCNT) fiber non-woven fabrics (NWFs) that are composed of interconnected SWCNT fibers with fused joints is reported, which have good flexibility, a low density of 0.46 g/cm3, a high electrical conductivity of 3.7 × 105 S/m, and a record high specific electrical conductivity of 803 (S·m2)/kg. They also showed excellent electrical heating ability, so that a temperature of ∼ 160 °C was rapidly reached at a low voltage of 2 V. Combined with their low density, the SWCNT fiber NWFs are promising for use as a heating unit for low temperature battery protection and de-icing applications.