Nano-composite materials and plasma-surface interactions

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Nano-Composite Materials and Plasma-Surface InteractionsOur research program involves the development of composite materials having components with sizes in the tens of nanometers (10-50 nm) mainly composed of carbon nanotubes (CNT) growing as a "CNT forest" on metallic surfaces. One important orientation of the research is to build a new generation of surfaces having a strongly enhanced ability to emit electrons and to transfer heat. The use of the plasma state is common in our research either to build the structures, to modify chemically the surfaces, to test their properties as electrodes in extreme conditions such as electric arcs, or in milder conditions such as fluorescent tube lighting applications. New surfaces in the shape of tuned carbon nanotube arrays or local 3-dimensional electron emission volumes are presently being fabricated and tested. Applications of these nano-scale materials are studied in areas such as (a) the energy sector for fuel cells and supercapacitors (electric cars), solar cells ("quantum dots arrays"), and high performance cooling surfaces, (b) nano-composite materials such as polymers (conducting and high performance plastics) and carbon nanotube-ceramic composites (3-D volumes on surfaces), and (c) micro-structured chemical reactors (chemical synthesis/removal, probing). Two key aspects of our carbon nanotube "nano-forests" and "nano-felts" are (1) the extraction of the nanotubes directly from the metallic substrate material, making in this way a very good surface for various systems using electrodes or sensors, and (2) our ability to model and design optimal CNT-based templates optimizing electron emission and plasma generation.