Carbon fiber is a good candidate in various applications, including in the military, structural, sports equipment, energy storage, and infrastructure. Coloring of carbon fiber has been a big challenge for decades due to their high degrees of crystallization and insufficient chemical affinity to dyes. Here, multicolored carbon fiber fabrics are fabricated using a feasible and effective atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique. The vibrant and uniform structural colors originating from thin-film interference is simply regulated by controlling the thickness of conformal TiO2 coatings on the surface of black carbon fibers. Impressively, the colorful coatings show excellent laundering durability, which can endure 50 cycles of domestic launderings. Moreover, the mechanical properties only drop off slightly after coloring. Overall, these results open an alternative avenue for development of TiO2 nanostructured films with multifunctional features grown using ALD technologies. This technology is speculated to have potential applications in various fields such as color engineering and radiation-proof fabrics and will further guide material design for future innovations in functional optical and color-display devices. More importantly, this research demonstrates a route for the coloring of black carbon fiber-based materials with vibrant colors.
Keywords: atomic layer deposition; carbon fiber fabrics; coloring; laundering durability; titanium oxide.