This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to develop a very inexpensive process for fabricating carbon nanostructures based on a newly developed technique for using microwaves to promote the uniform growth of very highly graphitic nanotubes. These fibers are reliably and reproducibly synthesized via a combination of plasma decomposition of methane and chemically catalyzed deposition of carbon. The resultant structures are <100 nm filamentary carbon strands with length of up to several hundred microns. This project will characterize the noteworthy properties of these nanostructures, develop the means to reproducibly manufacture them, and show how they may be advantageously added to the production of cost-effective composite materials for aerospace, automotive and other commercial applications.
