HiPCO® FIBER

HiPCO® fibers are produced using HiPCO® single-walled nanotubes by aligning each SWCNT side by side to form a long fiber. The aim is to transfer the tensile strength of a single HiPCO® nanotube (127 GPa) to the macroscale fiber. The current focus is to produce a fiber of 7 μm in diameter or even lower. Currently, the diameter of the fibers achieved by us is around 20- 140 μm, and the maximum tensile strength achieved is 650 MPa and 10 % conductivity of copper.

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Production of a good quality fiber from HiPCO® nanotubes can only happen with a combination of certain variables. These nanotubes are the ones with the smallest diameter known so far in this world and from previous studies, smaller nanotubes have exhibited maximum tensile strength. And arranging these nanotubes side by side using a wet spinning process can result in fibers with maximum strength. For that, all the variables affecting the fiber strength need to be identified and its been already identified. These variables need to be narrowed down by conducting a large number of experiments.