Carbon Nanotubes Polymer Nanocomposites

Polymer nanocomposites are a class of material with a great deal of promise for potential applications in various industries ranging from construction to aerospace. These are high performance materials that exhibit unusual property combinations and unique design possibilities and are thought of as the materials of the 21st century. With an estimated annual growth rate of about 25% and huge demand for engineering polymers, their potential is so promising that they are useful in several applications ranging from packaging to bio-medical. The main difference between polymeric nanocomposites and conventional composites is the filler that is being used for reinforcement. In the nanocomposites the reinforcement is on the order of nanometer that leads to a very different final macroscopic property. Due to this unique feature polymeric nanocomposites have been studied exclusively in the last decade using various nanofillers such as minerals, sheets or fibres. A carbon nanotube (CNT) is a miniature cylindrical carbon structure that has hexagonal graphite molecules attached at the edges. Nanotubes look like a powder or black soot, but they're actually rolled-up sheets of graphene that form hollow strands with walls that are only one atom thick. Nanotubes, which are sometimes called buckytubes, were developed from the Fullerene, a structure that is similar to the geodesic domes. They take the form of cylindrical carbon molecules and have novel properties that make them potentially useful in a wide variety of applications in nanotechnology, electronics, optics and other fields of materials science. They exhibit extraordinary strength and unique electrical properties, and are efficient conductors of heat. Nanotubes are members of the fullerene structural family, which also includes buckyballs. Whereas buckyballs are spherical in shape, a nanotube is cylindrical, with at least one end typically capped with a hemisphere of the buckyball structure. This book focuses on the preparation and property analysis of polymer nanocomposites with CNTs (fibres) as nano fillers.