Tech Transfer Virtual Exhibit

Carbon Group - Politecnico of Torino

The Carbon Group of the Politecnico of Torino (Italy, www.polito.it), has a well established experience in the growth of large amount of very thick mats of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and in characterization of such material. A carbon nanotube can be visualized as a hollow cylinder formed by rolling graphite sheet. Since CNT has exceptional mechanical/electrical/physical properties, this material have attracted enormous interest in recent years because of its potential applications in many fields, such as composite material, gas and chemical sensor, gas storage, nano-biotechnology, field emission display, etc.. The poor production rate and the following purification process are serious bottleneck to industrial development of CNT technology. By means of an efficient and easily scalable-up thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD), developed in our laboratory, we reached the goal to produce millimeter thick mats of high purity CNTs at an impressive deposition rate and reagent conversion. Furthermore the unique properties so far investigated on the as-grown material, such as super-hydrophobicity, high Young's modulus and modulus of rupture, suggest unique applications of this blocks of carbon nanotubes. The Carbon group has multidisciplinary competences because it collects 2 engineers, 2 physicists, 1 biologist and a chemist and on the basis of such multidisciplinarity can participate to the development of applications in many different fields.

Contact Organization

Website: http://3facmondovi.polito.it/carbongroup