Mechanical interfacial adhesion of carbon fibers-reinforced polarized-polypropylene matrix composites: effects of silane coupling agents

Abstract

Thermoplastic composites are used in a variety of applications such as mass transit, auto-motive parts, and military structures [1-6]. Their appeal compared to conventional materials such as aluminum, steel, and thermoset composites for these applications lies in their high specific strength, corrosion resistance, superior impact resistance, high toughness, and ease of recycling [1-7].In recent years, carbon fibers (CF) have been widely used as reinforcing materials in high performance composites. CF present several advantages, including high modulus and strength, good stiffness, and creep resistance [8-10]. Despite these advantages, the CF/ther-moplastic composites have unsatisfactory mechanical properties because CF have poor in-terfacial adhesion with most thermoplastic polymers due to their non-polar surface.The interfacial adhesion between reinforcing fibers and polymer matrices in composites is the controlling factor in obtaining optimum mechanical properties of composites [11-13]. To achieve good interfacial adhesion between CF and thermoplastic matrices, it is necessary to increase the surface polarity. In this light, increasing the surface polarity for van der Waals forces and hydrogen bonding can improve the interfacial adhesion. In efforts to increase the surface polarity of CF, various surface treatment techniques have been applied, including plasma treatment, anodic oxidation, metal plating, and cou-pling treatment [14,15]. Among the various treatments, coupling treatment is known to be a very effective method for improving the interfacial adhesion between the fibers and the thermoplastic matrices [16].The role of coupling agents in improving the interfacial adhesion between polymers and inorganic surfaces has been widely documented [17,18]. However, the effects of different coupling agents on interfacial adhesion between CF and polar-modified thermoplastic matri-ces have yet to be explicitly identified. Therefore, the first objective of this study is to evaluate the influence of sizing treatments by silane-based coupling agents on the interfacial adhesion properties between the fibers and the thermoplastic matrix. Another objective is to investigate the effects of the presence of surface functional groups containing silane-oxygen groups on the mechanical properties of carbon fiber-reinforced maleic anhydride-grafted polypropylene.The CF used in this work were polyacrylonitrile based high strength fibers, T-700SC-13000 (12K unidirectional fabric; Toray, Tokyo, Japan). The average diameter of these CF was around 7 μm. A highly polarized polypropylene sheet prepared by maleic anhydride grafting (Homan Petrochemical Co, Seoul, Korea) was used as a matrix. The reagents used for the coupling treatments were vinyltriethoxy silane (VTES), 3-ami-no propyl triethoxy silane (APS), and 3-methacryloxy propyl trimethoxy silane (MPTS; Aldrich, St. Louis, MO, USA), denoted as VTES, APS, and MPTS, respectively. The acid and silane treatments of the CF were carried out by the following procedure. For the acid