Wafer-scale vertically aligned carbon nanotubes locked by in situ hydrogelation toward strengthening static and dynamic compressive responses

Abstract

Wafer‐scale vertically aligned carbon nanotube/poly(vinyl alcohol) (VACNT/PVA) hydrogels were fabricated by infiltration of PVA among VACNTs and subsequent in situ hydrogelation. Owing to the homogeneous PVA infiltration, uniform distribution and orientation of the CNTs are well retained, which in turn provide large CNT‐PVA interfaces throughout the resulting hydrogels. Compared to bare PVA hydrogels, such composite hydrogels perform significantly enhanced longitudinal compressive responses upon both static and dynamic loadings, achieving improvements of up to 25.2‐ and 9.0‐fold in strength and loss modulus, respectively. The novel scalable fabrication of VACNT/PVA hydrogels and their attractive performances hold great potential for a wide range of applications.