A carbon nanomattress: A new nanosystem with intrinsic, tunable, damping properties

Ultra-hardness and atomic smoothness of amorphous diamond (a-D) films and the flexibility of carbon nanotubes (CNT) to create a unique, nanoscale, dual-layer film carbon nanomattress, which is hard yet retains elastic properties, was reported. The hybrid film was prepared by growing a dense, vertically aligned, and multiwalled CNT network by thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) on a 4 inch conductive silicon substrate. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) crosssectional image of the composite film show that the hard and solid top nanomattress is capable of distributing the forces applied to it uniformly to the CNTs, which act like a spring of the mattress. The viscoelastic properties of nanomattress are found to depend on the density of the CNTs within the film and on the physical dimensions. Nanomattress with smaller diameter, shorter length, and lower density, is prepared by using nanodynamic mechanical analysis.