Cellulose Nanocrystals Assisted Process to Integrate Carbon Nanotubes in CFRP Composites

摘要

A scalable method is presented for integrating pristine carbon nanotubes (pCNTs) in carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites using assisting nanomaterials, i.e. cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs). Our new methodology eliminates the need for functionalization which is time- and cost-ineffective. In our approach, pCNTs are first uniformly dispersed and stabilized in water using CNCs and carbon fibers (CFs) are subsequently immersed in the produced suspension to be coated with CNC-pCNT. Our results elucidate that the synergistic effect of CNC-pCNT improves the flexural strength and ILSS of coated CFRPs by 31% and 42% respectively compared to those of neat composites. This exemplifies 23% and 30% higher flexural strength and ILSS compared to those composites coated with functionalized CNTs (fCNTs). The use of water as solvent, elimination of time/cost inefficient chemical functionalization, and larger enhancement in mechanical properties compared to individual fCNTs make our CNC-assisted processing technique a viable scalable processing technique.