Graphene reinforced carbon fibers

Zan Gao; Jiadeng Zhu; Siavash Rajabpour; Kaushik Joshi; Małgorzata Kowalik; Brendan Croom; Yosyp Schwab; Liwen Zhang; Clifton Bumgardner; Kenneth R. Brown; Diana Burden; James William Klett; Adri C.T. van Duin; Leonid V. Zhigilei; Xiaodong Li

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaz4191

Graphene reinforced carbon fibers

Zan Gao, Jiadeng Zhu, Siavash Rajabpour, Kaushik Joshi, Małgorzata Kowalik, Brendan Croom, Yosyp Schwab, Liwen Zhang, Clifton Bumgardner, Kenneth R. Brown, Diana Burden, James William Klett, Adri C.T. van Duin, Leonid V. Zhigilei, Xiaodong Li

Extreme Environment Materials Process

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

113 Scopus citations

Abstract

The superlative strength-to-weight ratio of carbon fibers (CFs) can substantially reduce vehicle weight and improve energy efficiency. However, most CFs are derived from costly polyacrylonitrile (PAN), which limits their widespread adoption in the automotive industry. Extensive efforts to produce CFs from low cost, alternative precursor materials have failed to yield a commercially viable product. Here, we revisit PAN to study its conversion chemistry and microstructure evolution, which might provide clues for the design of low-cost CFs. We demonstrate that a small amount of graphene can minimize porosity/defects and reinforce PAN-based CFs. Our experimental results show that 0.075 weight % graphene-reinforced PAN/graphene composite CFs exhibits 225% increase in strength and 184% enhancement in Young's modulus compared to PAN CFs. Atomistic ReaxFF and large-scale molecular dynamics simulations jointly elucidate the ability of graphene to modify the microstructure by promoting favorable edge chemistry and polymer chain alignment.

Original language	English
Article number	aaz4191
Journal	Science Advances
Volume	6
Issue number	17
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaz4191
State	Published - Apr 2020

Funding

We thank the staff members at the University of Virginia NMCF for electron microscopy technical support, as well as H. Luo from G. M. Geise's group and M. Diasio from D. L. Green's group in Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Virginia for TGA and viscosity test support. We thank X. Xiao (Brookhaven National Laboratory) for performing the tomography experiments. Financial support for this study was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, Vehicle Technology Office (DE-EE0008195). B.C. is supported by the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program under grant no. 1315231. This research used Beamline 18-ID (FXI) of the National Synchrotron Light Source II, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Brookhaven National Laboratory under contract no. DE-SC0012704. Computational support is provided by the NSF through the extreme science and engineering discovery environment (MSS180008).

Funders	Funder number
DOE Office of Science
University of Virginia NMCF
Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment	MSS180008
National Science Foundation	1315231
U.S. Department of Energy	DE-EE0008195
Office of Science
Brookhaven National Laboratory	DE-SC0012704
University of Virginia

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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abstract = "The superlative strength-to-weight ratio of carbon fibers (CFs) can substantially reduce vehicle weight and improve energy efficiency. However, most CFs are derived from costly polyacrylonitrile (PAN), which limits their widespread adoption in the automotive industry. Extensive efforts to produce CFs from low cost, alternative precursor materials have failed to yield a commercially viable product. Here, we revisit PAN to study its conversion chemistry and microstructure evolution, which might provide clues for the design of low-cost CFs. We demonstrate that a small amount of graphene can minimize porosity/defects and reinforce PAN-based CFs. Our experimental results show that 0.075 weight % graphene-reinforced PAN/graphene composite CFs exhibits 225% increase in strength and 184% enhancement in Young's modulus compared to PAN CFs. Atomistic ReaxFF and large-scale molecular dynamics simulations jointly elucidate the ability of graphene to modify the microstructure by promoting favorable edge chemistry and polymer chain alignment.",

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Graphene reinforced carbon fibers

Abstract

Funding

UN SDGs

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