This work reports the preparation of carbon fiber reinforced thermoplastic composites via the in situ anionic ring opening polymerization of ε-caprolactam. Vacuum assisted resin transfer molding was used to fabricate polyamide-6/carbon fiber composites at different molding temperatures. As a result, the higher polymerization of ε-caprolactam was observed with the condition at 140 °C for satisfactory impregnation. Regarding molding temperature, the physical properties of polyamide-6/carbon fiber were observed that the bending and impact strengths at 140 °C were higher than those to at other molding temperatures. The polymerization kinetics of polyamide-6 was analyzed using differential scanning calorimetry by experimentally acquiring kinetic parameters according to model fitting approaches. Polymerization and crystallization, which occur simultaneously throughout the whole process, were separated using Gaussian and Maxwell-Boltzmann distributions to study polymerization kinetics. The result of the developed model was in good agreement with the experimental data for the presented first order autocatalytic reaction model.
Keywords: crystallinity; differential scanning calorimeter (DSC); polymerization kinetics; vacuum assisted resin transfer molding (VARTM); ε-caprolactam.