CompositesWorld
Issue link: https://cw.epubxp.com/i/620463
13 CompositesWorld.com Read this article online | short.compositesworld.com/CWIdeasIA Read more about Local Motors' 3D printed cars online in "Additive manufacturing: Can you print a car?" | short.compositesworld.com/3DPrintCar Read more about Arevo and other composites 3D-printing pioneers in "3D Printing: Niche or next step to manufacturing on demand?" | short.compositesworld.com/WIP3DPrint Read online about Connora's recyclable thermoset technology | short.compositesworld.com/REpoxyBlog Read more about MG Resins in the CW Blog titled, "New low-cost, high-temp resins" | short.compositesworld.com/LowCostHTR Read Collin Petersen's entire "Hybrid analysis" column online | short.compositesworld.com/HybridAnal have been some successes: Zyvex Technologies (Columbus, OH, US) has commercialized a full line of CNT-based additives. Another supplier, Nanocomp Technologies (Merrimack, NH, US), is fabricating CNT sheets, tapes and yarns that have been integrated into a variety of composite layups in anti-ballistic, aerospace and other applications. In 2015, however, I saw two companies stake a claim in the market with technologies that could take CNTs to a new level of functionality, signaling that CNTs have likely turned the corner. The frst is N12 Technologies (Cambridge, MA, US), a spinof from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Cambridge). N12's technology focuses on vertical aligned CNTs (VACNTs), which are "grown" in "forests" on a substrate surface in a furnace-based process and then placed between prepreg plies to provide the interlaminar properties that help minimize cracks and delamination. Tests have shown >30% improvement in interlaminar shear stress values. N12 also has demonstrated that VACNTs can increase fatigue life by 100%. The second, SP Nano Ltd. (Yavne, Israel), has developed SP1, a ther- mally stable protein that tightly binds to CNTs to form a stable SP1/CNT complex. SP1/CNT can be applied as a sizing-like coating to dry carbon fber at loadings of 0.3-0.4 wt-%. SP Nano tested this material, wet-laid and autoclave-cured, using a phenolic resin, and compared the results to those from the same test conducted on a carbon fber/phenolic without the SP1/CNT coating. The interlaminar shear strength of the SP1/CNT composite was 47% greater than that of the non-SP1/CNT composite. CW Ideas in Action Moreover, through-thickness tensile strength tests demonstrated a 176% increase in the SP1/CNT composite. Also, keep an eye on two other players in the nanosphere: OCSiAl (Luxembourg), which makes cost-efcient single-wall carbon nanotubes; and Haydale Ltd. (Ammanford, UK), which uses plasma treatment to functionalize CNTs in resin matrix. Nanomaterials are here to stay, and these CNT oferings might just be the tools the composites industry needs to make them work.