Nanotube Attachment for Prevention of Interfacial Delamination

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

9-15-2010

Abstract

A new approach to suppressing interfacial delamination in composites has been investigated. It involves growing strongly attached nanotubes on the surface of the core phase prior to matrix infiltration. Unusually durable interfaces between epoxy and graphite have been demonstrated using this technique. Two types of graphitic core materials have been studied: complex cellular foams having open-interconnected porosity and highly oriented pyrolitic graphite (HOPG) providing a model flat interface. When untreated foam is infiltrated with epoxy, the resulting composite is brittle, and shatters before 10% compression. However, when carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are grown on the foam prior to epoxy infiltration, the specimen becomes pliable, and visibly flattens out rather than fracturing. Model studies on a flat graphite-epoxy interface were performed by joining two HOPG specimens with a thin layer of epoxy, and testing the flexural response of the 'seam' using the three-point bend test. The untreated HOPG sandwich fails easily, whereas nanotube-attached HOPG sandwich shows an over three times increase in flexural load-carrying capacity, close to that of seamless monolithic graphite having identical dimensions. Microscopic evaluations of fractured interfaces indicate that, in all geometries, CNT grafting prevents delamination at the graphite-epoxy interface, and forces any crack(s) to propagate through the graphitic phase. This added inter-laminar strength and toughness can be related to the hierarchical morphology of the interface created by CNT attachment, and unprecedented composite structures can be envisioned.

DOI

10.1088/0022-3727/43/36/365301

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