Carbon fibre surface modification facilitated by silver-catalysed radical decarboxylation

David J Hayne; Bhagya Dharmasiri; Filip Stojcevski; Daniel J Eyckens; Joel F Hooper; Luke C Henderson

doi:10.1039/d3cc02482b

Carbon fibre surface modification facilitated by silver-catalysed radical decarboxylation

Chem Commun (Camb). 2023 Aug 10;59(65):9860-9863. doi: 10.1039/d3cc02482b.

Authors

David J Hayne¹, Bhagya Dharmasiri¹, Filip Stojcevski², Daniel J Eyckens³, Joel F Hooper⁴, Luke C Henderson¹

Affiliations

¹ Institute for Frontier Materials, Deakin University, Waurn Ponds, Geelong, Victoria 3216, Australia. luke.henderson@deakin.edu.au.
² Defence Science and Technology Group, Fisherman's Bend, Port Melbourne, Victoria 3207, Australia.
³ Manufacturing, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, Clayton, Victoria 3168, Australia.
⁴ Department of Chemistry, Monash University, Clayton 3800, Victoria, Australia. joel.hooper@monash.edu.

PMID: 37490281
DOI: 10.1039/d3cc02482b

Abstract

A silver catalysed radical decarboxylation process was used to graft a copolymer (4 : 1; methylacrylate/acrylic acid) onto short carbon fibres. Surface grafting was confirmed by XPS, SEM and TGA, suggesting that the polymer accounted for 10% of the modified materials mass. Incorporation of these surface enhanced carbon fibres into an epoxy resin gave composites demonstrating an increase in ductility and a clear change in failure mode from adhesive, at the fibre-matrix interface, to cohesive, within the matrix polymer itself.