NSF Award
9860634
9860634<br/> This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to develop a very inexpensive process for fabricating carbon nanostructures based on a newly developed technique for using microwaves to promote the uniform growth of very highly graphitic nanotubes. These fibers are reliably and reproducibly synthesized via a combination of plasma decomposition of methane and chemically catalyzed deposition of carbon. The resultant structures are <100 nm filamentary carbon strands with length of up to several hundred microns. <br/> This project will characterize the noteworthy properties of these nanostructures, develop the means to reproducibly manufacture them, and show how they may be advantageously added to the production of cost-effective composite materials for aerospace, automotive and other commercial applications.
