Buckypaper and its composites for aeronautic applications

Since the carbon nanotube (CNT) technology was invented in 1991, it has attracted widespread attention from researchers owing to the excellent properties and wide applications. However, the easy agglomeration of CNTs in composite materials severely restricts large-scale applications. The problem of CNT distributing in composites has been solved, since the buckypaper (BP) called ‘carbon nanotube film or carbon nanotube paper’ was first prepared in 1998. Because porous structure of BP is beneficial to impregnation of matrix materials, preparation methods and applications of BP composites have been widely reported. With porous structure, low density, anti-corrosion and excellent properties, BP and its composites could be applied in the electrically conductive fields. This paper is intended to provide a comprehensive review of BPs, including a fundamental understanding of the technology, methods of fabrication, related properties of BPs, various BP composites and their potential applications in aeronautics. The first section presents a brief introduction of BPs, then the descriptions of preparation methods, morphology and related properties of BPs and BP composites are introduced in detail. BP composites, which have been developed for improving related properties of BPs as functional materials, are briefly described. Specially, BP composites are fabricated for conductive applications in aeronautics, such as in deicers, electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding and lightning striking protection (LSP).