Preparation of Zinc Oxide Whisker on Carbon Fibers

Abstract

A process is adopted to grow whiskers on carbon fibers. The whisker growth is carried out in a two-step process. Plasma spraying, electroplating and magnetron sputtering are used to pretreat the surface of carbon fibers and then ZnO whiskers are grown by hydrothermal method. By comparing three different methods of surface pretreatment, it is concluded that magnetron sputtering is most available and has no damage to the carbon fibers. Combining preparation method of the ZnO whiskers, a new process is developed to surface modified of carbon fibers which is expected apply to carbon fiber composites.

Interface tailoring between flax yarns and epoxy matrix by ZnO nanorods

“…Indeed, to increase the surface area available for bonding and enhance load transfer between fibre and matrix, one possibility is to grow nanowires, nanotubes or whiskers on the surface of the fibre that could protrude into the matrix [31][32][33][34]. The whiskering process involves the nucleation and growth of single high-strength crystals such as silicon carbide (SiC) [35], titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) [36], silicon nitride (Si 3 N 4 ) [37] and zinc oxide (ZnO) [38,39]. Zinc oxide, in particular, has proved to be of great interest in the scientific community for its distinctive properties, including a wide bandgap of 3.4 eV and relatively large exciton binding energy of 60 meV, excellent chemical stability, nontoxicity, and good electrical, optical, and piezoelectric properties [40,41].…”