Surface modification on pitch-based carbon fibers by DBD air plasma at low pressure

摘要

Capacitively coupled radio-frequency dielectric barrier discharges (DBD) air plasma at low pressure was developed and applied for surface modification of pitch-based carbon fibers. It is demonstrated that after plasma treatment, the hydrophilicity of the fibers improves significantly with the tremendous reduction of contact angle from 132.4° to 11.5°, the interlaminar shear strength (ILSS) between the fibers and the epoxy resin improves 26.7%. On the other hand, the fibers keep their mechanical properties in terms of bending strength and bending modulus after plasma treatment.