Fabrication and Evaluation of Carbon Nanotube-Parylene Functional Composite-Films

We present the design, fabrication and mechanical testing results from Parylene-Carbon Nanotube (CNT)-Parylene composite-films. Utilizing SWNT materials as the active layer, we have fabricated flexible devices consisting of 10μm thick parylene membranes wrapped around active SWNTs. The tensile test results show that parylene-CNT-parylene sandwich has a linear-elastic response up to a strain value of ε ≅ 2% and the composite fails at ε
_Fail
≅ 7.5% strain. The load-unload testing of the sample shows that a very small change in resistance (~1%) was observed when applying a strain ranging from 0% to 2% and the results were repeatable up to 100 times. The resistance of the CNT-parylene film increased 9 fold at failure. Potential applications of this work include interconnect materials for flexible electronics devices.