Fabrication of stretchable and flexible vertically aligned carbon nanotube film

This paper presents a cost-effective method to transfer vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VA-CNTs) with Poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS). Here, in this process, we take the advantage of PDMS solution as the transfer medium, meanwhile utilize the good wetting of this solution on another cured PDMS film to realize efficient transfer. The SEM images of transferred CNTs were taken to characterize the surface properties and verify the quality of fabrication. It shows high quality VA-CNT film with notable stretchability and flexibility was obtained by this simple method. The well aligned PDMS films with proper as-grown CNTs have a broad potential to be utilized in numbers of novel nanodevices, such as gas sensor, supercapacitor and nanogenerator, etc.