Ultra-conductive wires with cascaded carbon nanotube/Cu structure

In the present study, ultra-conductive wires were produced by the cascaded Cu/MWCNT wire structure. Cascaded wires were prepared on the industrial 1 mm diameter Cu wire with two steps; Firstly, electrophoretic deposition (EPD) was used to deposit the functionalized MWCNT on the Cu wires. Secondly, a novel inverted cylindrical magnetron sputtering (ICMS) has been built to coat Cu on the MWCNT deposited Cu wire. Different number of cascaded layers up to 13 layers of Cu/MWCNT wires as well as different Cu coating parameter were produced. High deposition rate of MWCNT on Cu wires has been achieved by the EPD method. As can be seen from the cross-sectional SEM images, the intended cascaded structures were successfully formed. The ampacity of the 1 mm industrial Cu wire used in this study has increased by 9.2%. In addition, the temperature of the cascaded wires has shown slow increase compared to that of reference Cu wire. On the other hand, the maximum current able to carry with 1 °C temperature raise has increased by 50%. [Display omitted] •MWCNT were deposited densely on the Cu wire by electrophoretic deposition.•Inverted cylindrical magnetron sputtering were used for Cu coating.•Max. 13 layers of cascaded Cu/CNT wires were successfully produced.•9.2% increase in the ampacity has been realized.