A Study on Multifunctional Fiber Reinforced Polymer Composites with Controlled Interphase by Metal Oxide Nanostructures; ZnO, CuO, and SnO2

Abstract

Composites have been generally designed by three phrases; fiber, matrix, and interphase (an extended term of interfacial area) between the two. In particular, carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites have been widely used in almost every structural system due to the high strength, stiffness, low density, and toughness with respect to other engineering materials. The ultimate desired performance of composites is apparently to be influenced by the quality of the matrix-fiber interface (or called interphase effect). With this regard, the research effort will approach to tailoring the interphase through the growth of nanomaterials on the reinforcing fibers, then finally pursue the multifunctional composite materials and structures.

Whiskerization, one of the reinforcing interface materials, is normally deposited in an array of whiskers on the surface of the reinforcing fibers. The role of whiskers is to increase the interphase properties by interlocking the matrix-fiber interface, resulting in the enhanced interphase effect and by reducing the stress concentration of interphase region. In this work, metal oxide nanomaterials will generate the strength of surface of fibers in order to investigate both the functional characterization of metal oxide nanomaterials and the structural composites in viewpoint of mechanical properties. These nanomaterials behold in common their unique physical, chemical, optical and catalytic properties compared to their bulk counterparts. Therefore, many efforts have been made to synthesize multidimensional nanostructures for new and efficient nanodevices. Among these materials, zinc oxide (ZnO, band gap: 3.34 eV), copper oxide (CuO, band gap: 1.2 eV), and tin oxide (SnO2, band gap: 3.62 eV) will be selected and fabricated through the proposed unique hydrothermal method which is a called two-step seed-mediated hydrothermal method, favorable relatively low cost, low temperature and eco-friendly technique.

The proposed work will be explored to overcome the structural drawbacks of CFRP composites due to susceptible impact damage. Also, it will be enable CFRP composites with secondary reinforced metal oxide nanomaterials with above mentioned to have thermal behavior as a multifunctional performance. Therefore, this work will experimentally demonstrate that ZnO, CuO as well as SnO2 can execute the improvement of impact energy absorption: the cross-linked networks among surrounded interphase to be less crack propagation energy. Hence, it will be measured how much different concentrations of each metal oxide nanostructured polymer composites can be endowed to the increased tensile strength and elastic modulus as increased with the density of each metal oxide nanomaterials for a given the strong interfacial adhesion to the composites.

On the other hand, each metal oxide nanomaterials can be considered to utilize electric heating performance in advanced areas such as floor heating, road deicing, heating textiles, and so forth. This work will demonstrate the interlaminar characteristics for electrical resistive heating behavior owing to multiple junctions formed between the interactive nanomaterials in the interphase. The interlaminar region is attractive not only because of its heating efficiency, but also because of as a structural reinforcement. Moreover, the piezoresistive effect of interlaminar part was shown. Therefore, it is anticipated that these metal oxide nanostructured grown CFRP composites will have a promising future in multifunctional structural and nonstructural applications.