Anisotropy of Sheared Carbon-Nanotube Suspensions

by D. Fry et al. Physical Review Letters, 15 Jul 2005 We measure the anisotropy of sheared carbon-nanotube suspensions for a broad range of concentration, aspect ratio, and strain rate using a variety of methods. Our measurements highlight the importance of excluded-volume interactions in the semidilute regime, with scaling in terms of a dimensionless shear rate. Our results also suggest that such interactions might be exploited to fractionate carbon nanotubes by length in simple shear flow. Read more