Abstract
There is a growing demand for advanced conductors with enhanced electrical properties to increase the energy efficiency in various applications. A promising strategy to achieve this involves the use of ultraconductive copper (UCC) composites that incorporate highly conductive carbon materials, such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs), into the copper matrix. In this study, we present a scalable brush coating technique to incorporate CNTs onto Cu substrates to produce Cu-CNT-Cu composites. The process involves brush coating the CNT solution on Cu tape substrates, followed by vacuum-assisted thermal removal of organic moieties (e.g., surfactant/polymer). This step ensures the creation of a uniformly distributed CNT network within the Cu matrix. By addition of a thin film Cu overlayer, the fabricated Cu-CNT-Cu composite architecture demonstrates similar electrical conductivity, increased current carrying capacity, and enhanced mechanical properties compared to pure Cu reference tapes. The performance characteristics of these UCC tapes along with the scalability of the brush coating approach hold great promise for the fabrication of advanced conductors for wide-ranging energy applications.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 11176-11183 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | ACS Applied Nano Materials |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 10 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - May 24 2024 |
Funding
Research is supported in part by the US Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO), Powertrain Materials Core Program, under Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with UT-Battelle, LLC, for the US DOE. SEM and STEM imaging and analyses were conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS), which is sponsored at ORNL by the Scientific User Facilities Division, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, US DOE. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( https://www.energy.gov/doe-public-access-plan ).
Keywords
- brush coating
- carbon nanotubes
- electrical property
- mechanical properties
- ultraconductive copper