Carbon nanotube dry adhesives with temperature-enhanced adhesion over a large temperature range.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27849052.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms13450 and PMC identifier 5116088.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Conventional adhesives show a decrease in the adhesion force with increasing temperature due to thermally induced viscoelastic thinning and/or structural decomposition. Here, we report the counter-intuitive behaviour of carbon nanotube (CNT) dry adhesives that show a temperature-enhanced adhesion strength by over six-fold up to 143 N cm-2 (4 mm × 4 mm), among the strongest pure CNT dry adhesives, over a temperature range from -196 to 1,000 °C. This unusual adhesion behaviour leads to temperature-enhanced electrical and thermal transports, enabling the CNT dry adhesive for efficient electrical and thermal management when being used as a conductive double-sided sticky tape. With its intrinsic thermal stability, our CNT adhesive sustains many temperature transition cycles over a wide operation temperature range. We discover that a 'nano-interlock' adhesion mechanism is responsible for the adhesion behaviour, which could be applied to the development of various dry CNT adhesives with novel features.