Single-wall carbon nanotube fiber non-woven fabrics with a high electrothermal heating response

Carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers have great promise for constructing multifunctional fabrics with high electrical conductivity, good electro-heating ability, excellent flexibility, and a low density. However, the inter-fiber contacts in the fabric greatly reduce these advantages and limit their application. Herein, a simple pressure-fusing method to fabricate single-wall CNT (SWCNT) fiber non-woven fabrics (NWFs) that are composed of interconnected SWCNT fibers with fused joints is reported, which have good flexibility, a low density of 0.46 g/cm³, a high electrical conductivity of 3.7 × 10⁵ S/m, and a record high specific electrical conductivity of 803 (S·m²)/kg. They also showed excellent electrical heating ability, so that a temperature of ~ 160 °C was rapidly reached at a low voltage of 2 V. Combined with their low density, the SWCNT fiber NWFs are promising for use as a heating unit for low temperature battery protection and de-icing applications.