Bioinspired Modification via Green Synthesis of Mussel-Inspired Nanoparticles on Carbon Fiber Surface for Advanced Composite Materials

Abstract

Carbon fibers with excellent performances suffer from their low surface activity in many applications. Modifying fiber surfaces can improve the properties of fiber–matrix interface, which can expand the usage of carbon fiber in the field of energy. However, there are two main problems in the most traditional researches: the damaged structure of fiber by pretreatment to build the active site, and the weak interaction between fiber and nanoparticles by deposition. Herein, we first report the bioinspired copolymerization of dopamine and poly(amidoamine) on the fiber surface using polydopamine (the versatile adhesives) as an efficient and robust platform to graft poly(amidoamine) onto fiber surface at room temperature. Systematic investigations were performed to explore optimum conditions and the reaction mechanism of copolymerization of dopamine/poly(amidoamine) at different quantities of poly(amidoamine) on carbon fiber surfaces. The novel modification can introduce sufficient functionalization groups on fiber surface without decreasing fiber tensile strength, which can significantly increase the interfacial shear strength and impact strength of the resulting composites to 124.05 MPa and 91.17 KJ/m2, respectively. The novel strategy presents a promising and “green” platform to prepare advanced composite materials for the demand of highly mechanical properties and the usages of energy conservation.