Supramolecular Processing of Carbon Nanotubes and Polymers using a Non-volatile Organic Eutectic Liquid

Carbon nanotube (CNTs) is a promising filler material for flexible electronics due to its high intrinsic carrier mobility, conductivity, mechanical flexibility, and etc. Despite the widespread success in a variety of applications using CNTs, however, making polymer–CNTs composites still requires long and tedious steps including dispersion of CNTs using a toxic and volatile organic solvent followed by the solvent removal. To this end, in this presentation, we report a facile, cost-competitive, and scalable method for producing flexible, conductive, and healable polymer-CNTs composites in the absence of a toxic, volatile organic solvent. We found a supramolecular, non-volatile eutectic liquid (EL), consisting of diphenylamine and benzophenone, can not only dissolve many commodity polymers but also form bucky gels with CNTs upon mixing. In order to take these advantages, polymer-CNTs composites were produced via one-pot melt-blending the EL and CNTs with a model thermoplastic elastomer, poly(styrene-b-butadiene-b-styrene). The resulting composite behaves as a highly sensitive, healable electromechanical sensor that can even measure blood pulsation on the human wrist.