Dispersions of Aramid Nanofibers: A New Nanoscale Building Block

Stable dispersions of nanofibers are virtually unknown for synthetic polymers. They can complement analogous dispersions of inorganic components, such as nanoparticles, nanowires, nanosheets, etc. as a fundamental component of a toolset for design of nanostructures and metamaterials via numerous solvent-based processing methods. As such, strong flexible polymeric nanofibers are very desirable for the effective utilization within composites of nanoscale inorganic components such as nanowires, carbon nanotubes, graphene, and others. Here stable dispersions of uniform high-aspect-ratio aramid nanofibers (ANFs) with diameters between 3 and 30 nm and up to 10 μm in length were successfully obtained. Unlike the…