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Electrochromatic carbon nanotube/polydiacetylene nanocomposite fibres

Nature Nanotechnology volume 4, pages 738–741 (2009)Cite this article

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Abstract

Chromatic materials such as polydiacetylene change colour in response to a wide variety of environmental stimuli, including changes in temperature, pH and chemical or mechanical stress, and have been extensively explored as sensing devices1,2,3,4. Here, we report the facile synthesis of carbon nanotube/polydiacetylene nanocomposite fibres that rapidly and reversibly respond to electrical current, with the resulting colour change being readily observable with the naked eye. These composite fibres also chromatically respond to a broad spectrum of other stimulations. For example, they exhibit rapid and reversible stress-induced chromatism with negligible elongation. These electrochromatic nanocomposite fibres could have various applications in sensing.

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Figure 1: Characterization of the nanotubes used to make the CNT/PDA fibres.
Figure 2: Nanotubes are highly aligned in fibres.
Figure 3: Electrical properties of a CNT/PDA fibre.
Figure 4: Chromatic transitions of a composite CNT/PDA fibre in response to an electric current.

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Change history

  • 27 September 2009

    In the version of this Letter initially published online, Fig. 1a should have been described as a transmission electron microscopy image. This error has been corrected in all versions.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Shanghai Pujiang Program (09PJ1401100) and start-up fund at Fudan University, and partly supported by the US Department of Energy (Los Alamos National Laboratory Directed Research and Development Project). The authors thank M. Jain, J.O. Willis and D.E. Peterson for help with the conductivity measurements and for their critical reading of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Advanced Materials and Department of Macromolecular Science, Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers of Ministry of Education, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200438, China

    Huisheng Peng, Xuemei Sun, Fangjing Cai, Xuli Chen, Yinchao Zhu, Guipan Liao & Daoyong Chen

  2. Suzhou Institute of Nano-tech and Nano-bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, Jiangsu, 215125, China

    Qingwen Li

  3. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The University of California at Los Angeles, California, 90095, USA

    Yunfeng Lu

  4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, 27695, North Carolina, USA

    Yuntian Zhu

  5. Materials Physics and Applications Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, 87545, New Mexico, USA

    Quanxi Jia

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Contributions

Q.L. contributed materials. X.S., F.C., Y.Z., G.L. and H.P. carried out experiments. X.C., D.C., Y.L., Y.Z. and Q.J. contributed to preparation of the manuscript. H.P. directed the research, analysed the data and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Huisheng Peng.

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Peng, H., Sun, X., Cai, F. et al. Electrochromatic carbon nanotube/polydiacetylene nanocomposite fibres. Nature Nanotech 4, 738–741 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2009.264

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