On Young’s modulus of multi-walled carbon nanotubes

Abstract. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) were discovered by Iijima in 1991 as the fourth form of carbon. Carbon nano-tubes are the ultimate carbon fibres because of their high Young’s modulus of ≈ 1 TPa which is very useful for load transfer in nanocomposites. In the present work, CNT/Al nanocomposites were fabricated by the powder metallurgy technique and after extrusion of the nanocomposites bright field transmission electron microscopic (TEM) studies were carried out. From the TEM images so obtained, a novel method of ascertaining the Young’s modulus of multi-walled carbon nanotubes is worked out in the present paper which turns out to be 0⋅9 TPa which is consistent with the experimental results. Keywords. Multi-walled carbon nanotubes; CNT/Al nanocomposites; Young’s modulus; TEM