Stability Of Carbon Nanotubes And Fabrication And Mechanical Properties Of Carbon Nanotube Based Composite

Since its discovery, carbon nanotube (CNT) has captured exceptional attention from physicists, chemists and materials scientists alike. Its extraordinary properties, high strength, low density, huge aspect ratio, electrical conductivity of copper and silicon, thermal conductivity of diamond, size of DNA, the chemistry of carbon, hold great promise for enormous potential application in both functional and structural direction. In this paper, for the application of carbon nanotubes in NEMS, the stability of carbon nanotube under its weight and the pull-in stability of carbon nanotube based nanoswitch structure are studied. A CNTs reinforced micro/nano multiscale hybrid composite is fabricated and its mechanical properties are invstigated by static and dynamic compressive test. The obtained results are outlined as following:a) By using continuum rod model, the stability of single walled carbon nanotube under its weight is studied. Two dimensionless numbers, ρgR/E and t/R, which govern the aspect ratio of carbon nanotube, are found by dimension analysis. Research results show that the critical aspect ratio can reach to the order of 10~6.b) Double cantilevered model with large deformation is used to construct nonlinear pull-in equations for carbon nanotube-carbon nanotube based structures. Galekin method is applied to discretize the equations and numerical simulation is carried out to solve the nonlinear equations by...