Buckypaper´s Fabrication and Application to Passive Vibration Control

In recent years, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) attract intense research duo to their novel mechanical and electronic properties and their tremendous potential for future technological applications. In this paper, a CVD synthesis method of well aligned multi-walled carbon nanotubes using iron(II) phthalocyanine as raw material and catalyst was introduced, then the fabrication of carbon nanotubes thin sheets (buckypapers) using vacuum filtration was detailed demonstrated. Scanning electron microscopy(SEM) characterization was used to investigate the nanotubes´ alignment and buckypapers´ surface character. Finally, Finite element analysis of glass silicone with attached buckypapers using ABAQUS indicated that the first 7 natural vibration modes increase 28% to 103% with minimal structural weight increase. Experiments show that the power spectral density decreases when a piece of buckypaper was attached to the substrate.