1.Hubei Provincial Key Laboratory of Green Materials for Light Industry, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan 430068, China 2.Collaborative Innovation Center of Green Lightweight Materials and Processing, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan 430068, China 3.School of Materials and Chemical Engineering, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan 430068, China
As a high specific surface area, onedimensional carbon nanomaterial with outstanding mechanical (strength, modulus, etc.) and functional (electromagnetic loss, heat conduction, electric conduction, dielectric, etc.) properties, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are usually compounded with polymer or semiconductor, represented by cadmium sulfide (CdS), to prepare highperformance or functional nanocomposites. When CNTs are used as the host with polymer or CdS as the modifier, electromagnetic wave absorbing or dielectric composites are mostly prepared. For the preparation of the former, an effective method is to wrap CNTs with a conjugated polymer or monocrystalline CdS (either is a semiconductor), thereby improving the wave absorbing property of CNTs via a ternary coupling of the semiconductor’s high conduction loss, its dipolar polarization loss, and the CNTssemiconductor interfacial polarization loss. While, for the preparation of the latter, CNTs are generally dispersed effectively in a low dielectric loss, polar polymer matrix to obtain a higher permittivity of the CNTs/polymer composite as well as to decrease its dielectric loss and increase breakdown field intensity significantly, thus to accomplish a high chargeenergy storage density. Conversely, a polymer or CdS also is used as the host with CNTs as the modifier. Based on an ordinary polymer host, the composites with high strength and modulus, wave absorbing, heat conductive, electrically conductive and dielectric can be prepared by means of a volume fraction effect of the CNTs mechanical or functional modifier incorporated. Nevertheless, a conjugatedpolymer or CdS semiconductor host favors the preparation of photoelectronic (photovoltaic, photoluminescent, photocatalytic, etc.) composites with high efficiency due to strong photoelectrons transfer effect on semiconductor caused by the high specific surface area and conductivity of CNTs.