Abstract
Multiwalled carbon nanotubes in uncured ultraviolet ray curing resin suspension were aligned by applying traveling electric field. In general, the size of the area where the multiwalled carbon nanotubes were continuously aligned by applying electric field is restricted by an interelectrode distance. In this study, the restriction of the alignment area size was removed by adoption of the multiple-electrode and application of the multi-phase voltage. The multiple-electrode used to the experiment was constructed by 24 long and slender electrodes. A cover glass was put on the multiple-electrode, and the suspension was dropped on the cover glass. Rectangular and eight-phase voltage was applied to the multiple-electrode. The phase differences between voltages applied to one and the neighboring electrodes were ±45 degrees. The multiwalled carbon nanotubes in the suspension were aligned in much wider area than the interelectrode distance by applying the traveling electric field generated by the multi-phase voltage. In the latter half of this paper, the theoretical background for the experiment based on the method proposed by the author was shown. Furthermore the influences of the number of phases in the multi-phase voltage and the suspension thickness on fluctuation of the carbon nanotube orientation were theoretically clarified.
