Effect of Nanostructure and Crosslinks on Impact Resistance of Carbon Nanotube Films Under Micro‐Ballistic Impact

Carbon nanotube (CNT) films show great promise as an advanced bulletproof materials due to their excellent energy dissipation ability under impact loadings. However, it is challenging to determine the optimized architecture structure of CNTs to enhance the impact resistance of CNT films. In this study, the impact behavior of CNT films with various architecture structures were studied by micro-ballistic impact experiments and coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CGMD) simulations. The micro-ballistic impact experimental results showed that the cross-ply laminated (CPL) structure enhances significantly the specific energy absorption (SEA) of CNT films compared to that with disordered structure due to the synergistic interactions between covalent bonds in CNT chains. On this basis, four CPL-CNT (CCNT) films with the same areal density (ρ