RESUMEN
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are typical one-dimensional nanomaterials which have been widely studied for more than three decades since 1991 because of their excellent mechanical, electrical, thermal, and optical properties. Among various types of CNTs, the ultralong CNTs which have lengths over centimeters and defect-free structures exhibit superior advantages for fabricating superstrong CNT fibers, CNT-based chips, transparent conductive films, and high-performance cables. The length, orientation, alignment, defects, cleanliness, and other microscopic characteristics of CNTs have significant impacts on their fundamental physical properties. Therefore, the controlled synthesis and mass production of high-quality ultralong CNTs is the key to fully exploiting their extraordinary properties. Despite significant progress made in the study of ultralong CNTs during the past three decades, the precise structural control and mass production of ultralong CNTs remain a great challenge. In this review, we systematically summarize the growth mechanism and controlled synthesis strategies of ultralong CNTs. We also introduce the progress in the applications of ultralong CNTs. Additionally, we summarize the scientific and technological challenges facing the mass production of ultralong CNTs and provide an outlook and in-depth discussion on the future development direction.
RESUMEN
Photodetectors are in huge demand in multiple fields, such as remote sensing, chemical detection, security, and medical imaging. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are promising candidates for high-performance photodetectors due to their extraordinary optical and electrical properties. However, the performance of previously reported CNT-based photodetectors is far from the intrinsic photoelectrical properties of CNTs because of the noncontinuous lengths, structural defects, and unsatisfactory structural design of the previously used short CNTs. The key to improving the performance of CNT-based photodetectors is to increase the length and structural quality of the CNTs. Herein, high-performance photodetectors were fabricated by using high-density suspended ultralong CNTs (SUCNTs). The suspended structures of ultralong CNTs not only reduced the electron-phonon interactions generated by substrates but also largely avoided bolometric effects through efficient heat dissipation. Moreover, the characteristics of high areal density and defect-free structures of SUCNTs could increase the effective absorption areas and improve their carrier mobility, resulting in enhanced photoconductive responses. Consequently, compared with the nonsuspended short CNTs, the SUCNT-based photodetectors achieved significantly improved photodetection performance, such as high responsivity (0.181 A W-1), detectivity (1.20 × 109 cm Hz1/2 W-1), ultrafast response (0.13 ms), and broad detection range (405-850 nm).
RESUMEN
Airflow sensors are in huge demand in many fields such as the aerospace industry, weather forecasting, environmental monitoring, chemical and biological engineering, health monitoring, wearable smart devices, etc. However, traditional airflow sensors can hardly meet the requirements of these applications in the aspects of sensitivity, response speed, detection threshold, detection range, and power consumption. Herein, this work reports high-performance airflow sensors based on suspended ultralong carbon nanotube (CNT) crossed networks (SCNT-CNs). The unique topologies of SCNT-CNs with abundant X junctions can fully exhibit the extraordinary intrinsic properties of ultralong CNTs and significantly improve the sensing performance and robustness of SCNT-CNs-based airflow sensors, which simultaneously achieved high sensitivity, fast response speed, low detection threshold, and wide detection range. Moreover, the capability for encapsulation also guaranteed the practicality of SCNT-CNs, enabling their applications in respiratory monitoring, flow rate display and transient response analysis. Simulations were used to unveil the sensing mechanisms of SCNT-CNs, showing that the piezoresistive responses were mainly attributed to the variation of junction resistances. This work shows that SCNT-CNs have many superiorities in the fabrication of advanced airflow sensors as well as other related applications.
