Dry‐Transfer of Aligned Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes for Flexible Transparent Thin Films

Abstract

Herein we present an inexpensive facile wet‐chemistry‐free approach to the transfer of chemical vapour‐deposited multiwalled carbon nanotubes to flexible transparent polymer substrates in a single‐step process. By controlling the nanotube length, we demonstrate accurate control over the electrical conductivity and optical transparency of the transferred thin films. Uniaxial strains of up to 140% induced only minor reductions in sample conductivity, opening up a number of applications in stretchable electronics. Nanotube alignment offers enhanced functionality for applications such as polarisation selective electrodes and flexible supercapacitor substrates. A capacitance of 17 F/g was determined for supercapacitors fabricated from the reported dry‐transferred MWCNTs with the corresponding cyclic voltagrams showing a clear dependence on nanotube length.