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Carbon Nanofibers and Their Applications

Carbon nanofibers are cylindrical nanostructures with graphene layers arranged as stacked cones, cups or plates. Carbon NanoFibers (Purity 96%, Outside Diameter: 190-590nm) could be defined as sp2-based linear filaments with diameter of ca. 100 nm that are characterized by flexibility and their aspect ratio. Materials in a form of fiber are of great practical and scientific importance. The combination of high specific area, flexibility, and high mechanical strength allow nanofibers to be used in our daily life as well as in fabricating tough composites for vehicles and aerospace.
As we mentioned Carbon NanoFibers can be used in various areas. Now let's check some examples of these areas. For example their remarkable properties, combined with the unique low temperature deterministic growth process makes carbon nanofibers very suitable for semiconductor packaging applications as well as building advanced capacitors.
Due to their metallic nature carbon nanofibers, when grown on metallic surfaces, provide a large increase ineffective surface area per footprint. As a result, CNF have also been implemented as electrode material for two types of capacitors, namely decoupling capacitors and supercapacitors. Supercapacitors are electrochemical capacitors with high power density. Their life time is 100 times larger than Lithium batteries and their performance is largely dictated by the effective area of the electrode materials, its structure. Historically active carbon has been used as electrode material, however more recently flexible sheets of electrospun carbon nanofibers are considered prospective electrodes materials for supercapacitors because of their well interconnected pores, high mechanical and electrochemical stability.
Vertically aligned Carbon NanoFibers have also great potential in nanoelectromechanical system because a single carbon nanofiber can be grown up to a few micron long, standing alone vertically aligned at controlled position which can be addressed easily. The long single carbon nanofiber can be bent easily by applying low electric field. The fiber could bear the 900 bend and came back to original position on switching electric field off.
Carbon nanofibers can also be used in biomedical applications. For example researchers are using carbon nanofibers to delivery therapeutic drugs. They have developed an elastic material that is embedded with needle like carbon nanofibers. The material is intended to be used as balloons which are inserted next diseased tissue, and then inflated. When the balloon is inflated the carbon, nanofibers penetrate diseased cells and delivery therapeutic drugs.

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