Researchers at William Marsh Rice University (Rice) in Houston, US, have successfully demonstrated the full recyclability of carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers. These findings make CNTs a viable alternative to traditional materials like metals and polymers, which contain larger and more difficult to recycle carbon fibers.“Recycling has long been a challenge in the materials industry — metals recycling is often inefficient and energy intensive, polymers tend to lose their properties after reprocessing, and carbon fibers cannot be recycled at all, only downcycled by chopping them up into short pieces,” says corresponding author Matteo Pasquali, director of Rice’s Carbon Hub and a professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Materials Science and NanoEngineering and Chemistry.
