Continuous Manufacturing of Aligned Carbon Nanotube Films

We present a continuous manufacturing process for low-cost and scalable production of vertically aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) forests, along with continuous rolling of the CNTs to create horizontally aligned (HA) CNT ribbons and sheets. These methods are capable of producing uniform films over waferscale dimensions and beyond, and the CNTs can be patterned by lithography and plasma etching to achieve feature dimensions down to the micron scale. In this paper, we describe the design, manufacturing and related process physics of (1) a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) chamber apparatus for continuous CNT forest growth on a re-circulating catalyst-coated substrate; and (2) a mechanical rolling machine for CNT densification and transfer printing. Together, these innovations enable integration of CNT high quality and ordered CNTs growth with electronics and composites manufacturing on arbitrary substrates, including flexible plastics, fiber laminates, and metal foils.