Preliminary study on morphology of in-situ hybrid composites by using acoustic microscopy

摘要

Broad application areas of reinforced plastics include electrical/electronic, automobile, aeronautic and astronautic industries. In order to achieve optimization of high performance and good processability for polymer composites, a new concept, named as in situ hybrid composite, has been proposed. This reinforced structure of this composite consists of three components in principle: macroscopic fibers, microscopic thermotropic liquid crystalline polymer (TLCP) fibrils and a matrix resin. In this work, acoustic microscopy has been used to observe morphology of this composite, the experimental results revealed reinforcements with diameters at two orders of magnitude. Obtained high-resolution acoustic images show that the morphology of this material is accordant with the model described the reinforced structure of in-situ hybrid composites. So it can be concluded that the acoustic microscopy is an effective method to study this kind of composite.