Resumen:
In recent years, the addition of carbon nanotubes to construction
materials has attracted considerable interest, due to the improvement
of mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties of cement. The incorporation
of carbon nanotubes into a cement matrix causes an increase
of several mechanical properties of up to 170% even with low carbon
nanotubes concentrations. The objective of this study is to analyze the
influence of the type of functionalization and number of walls of
carbon nanotubes on the interaction between these nanostructures
and a cement surface and thus, on the improvement of their mechanical
properties. Thus, single-walled and double-walled carbon nanotubes
were used to investigate the influence of the number of walls.
The effect of carbon nanotube functionalization was studied using
carbon nanotubes functionalized with carboxyl and carboxylate
groups. The experimental results demonstrate that the incorporation
of carbon nanotubes into the cement matrix improves the mechanical
properties of the resulting material. Functionalized carbon nanotubes
perform better than pristine carbon nanotubes. Electrostatic attractions
play a central role in establishing strong int...