Objective
The most common traditional materials used in electrical energy distribution systems are copper and copper alloys. Modern applications show an increasing demand for better heat and electric current carrying capacity at the level beyond copper base materials. Nanocarbon materials, such as carbon nanotubes and graphene have attracted attention due to their high electrical, thermal conductivity and exceptional mechanical properties.
It would appear that combining copper with high performance nanocarbons towards composite materials could offer immediate solution to problems encountered currently. Copper nanocarbon composites could form the next generation of conductors, where copper contributes the benefits of electrical conductivity, whereas nanocarbon brings to this composite its low weight, flexibility, mechanical reinforcement and thermal management. Recent breakthrough in the chirality control of carbon nanotubes could contribute significantly to the electrical conductivity of these composite materials beyond the performance achieved by bulk copper conductors.
The material and process costs required to achieve improvement of the overall performance of copper based electrical conductors, need to be compatible with large scale conductor manufacturing and overcome the issues such as the cost of the nanocarbons and the difficulty of scaling up the production processes.
This proposal is aimed at developing a copper nanocarbon composite with significantly improved overall properties, including electrical, thermal and mechanical performances over bulk copper. The proposal also aims to develop production process that will be scalable to large volume manufacture. A key breakthrough will be the development/modification of the continuous carbon nanotube fibre process originating from Cambridge University for copper composite production, an inherently larger volume process for the production of carbon nanotube with high degree of structural control and molecular orientation.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesphysical scienceselectromagnetism and electronics
- engineering and technologynanotechnologynano-materialstwo-dimensional nanostructuresgraphene
- engineering and technologymaterials engineeringcomposites
You need to log in or register to use this function
We are sorry... an unexpected error occurred during execution.
You need to be authenticated. Your session might have expired.
Thank you for your feedback.
You will soon receive an email to confirm the submission. If you have selected to be notified about the reporting status, you will also be contacted when the reporting status will change.
Programme(s)
Call for proposal
FP7-2013-NMP-ICT-FOF(RTD)
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
CP-FP - Small or medium-scale focused research projectCoordinator
CB2 1TN Cambridge
United Kingdom
See on map
Participants (13)
02230 Espoo
See on map
WC2N 5EH LONDON
See on map
2250 OLEN
See on map
02150 Espoo
See on map
CB23 5BN Cambridge
See on map
92400 Courbevoie
See on map
30-059 Krakow
See on map
49074 Osnabruck
See on map
EH14 4AP EDINBURGH
See on map
78300 POISSY
See on map
89079 ULM
See on map
70771 Leinfelden-Echterdingen
See on map
BS9 4HW BRISTOL
See on map