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A cross-disciplinary team at Rice University has developed a new type of electric heating element—one that looks less like a traditional metal coil and more like a high-performance thread. In a study published in Small, the researchers demonstrated that wires and fabrics made from carbon nanotube fibers (CNTFs) can deliver substantially more heating power per unit mass than conventional metal-alloy heaters when placed directly in flowing gases.
Rather than adapting CNTFs to existing heater designs, the team built devices made entirely from the fibers, including single filaments, parallel arrays and textile-like fabrics. Their key performance metric was specific power loading—the maximum heating power per unit mass a device can sustain before failure.
Across multiple configurations and operating conditions, CNTF heaters consistently achieved higher specific power loadings than comparable metal-alloy elements. The advantage was particularly pronounced in nonoxidizing environments, where carbon-based materials can withstand far higher temperatures without degradation. From a heat-transfer perspective, the fibers’ thermal properties proved especially important.
“Their high thermal conductivity helps distribute heat and suppress localized hot spots, which are a common cause of heater failure,” said Geoff Wehmeyer, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and an expert in nanoscale heat transport. “That heat spreading fundamentally changes how these devices behave under extreme conditions.”
A distinctive feature of the work is its reliance on textile-inspired manufacturing techniques. CNTF yarns can be woven, knitted and assembled into lightweight, high-surface area structures—geometries that are particularly well suited for immersion heating. Vanessa Sanchez, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, contributed expertise in advanced manufacturing and textile technologies that helped translate nanoscale fibers into device-scale systems.
“Textile techniques give us extraordinary freedom in creating three-dimensional architectures,” Sanchez said. “We can design heaters that are lightweight, porous and mechanically compliant, while remaining electrically functional.”
Compared with rigid metal meshes, CNTF fabrics exhibited more uniform heating behavior and reduced hot spot formation, benefits again linked to the fibers’ ability to spread heat efficiently.
The findings point to a potential new pathway for electrifying industrial heating, a critical but technically challenging step toward reducing carbon emissions. “Electrifying industrial heat is one of the most important, and most difficult, pieces of decarbonization,” said first author Monisha Vijay Kumar, a graduate student in applied physics. “We wanted to understand whether an entirely different class of materials could expand what’s possible in gas heating.”
The study highlights the fact that performance gains arise not only from material properties but also from the new architectures those properties enable. CNTFs can be produced at extremely small diameters while retaining mechanical robustness, opening design possibilities that are difficult to achieve with metal wires.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, Shell, the Welch Foundation, the Carbon Hub, a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Opportunity award, and a National GEM Consortium Fellowship.