Committee

Prof. Will Gutekunst – School of Chemistry and Biochemistry (advisor)
Prof. Jud Ready – School of Materials Science and Engineering
Prof. John Reynolds – School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Dr. Amjad Almansour – NASA Glenn Research Center

Abstract

In the last two decades, key innovations have been made in the synthesis and applications for boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs). BNNTs are electrical insulators with a band gap of 5-6 eV, but also possess resistance to significant oxidation up to 900 °C, low-k dielectric properties, high thermal conductivity, and high strength. This combination of properties makes BNNTs good candidates for applications requiring one or more of these attributes. Formation of BNNT fibers has been reported in the literature by two methods: wet spinning from BNNTs in a superacid solution and direct assembly from the as-grown BNNT material upon synthesis in the reactor. The wet spinning method to produce BNNT fiber involves a process of forming a liquid crystalline phase of BNNT in a superacid and produces moderately aligned BNNT fibers. To date, these literature-reported fibers have a tensile strength of 10-16 MPa and a modulus of 0.5-1.5 GPa. This work represents significant progress towards producing BNNT fibers and films with improved structure and mechanical properties.