The performance of low weight, high stiff multi-materials relies on the interfacial bond quality between the adherends. This study analyses the effect of surface roughness, organosilane treatment and coating with diamond like carbon on the adhesion strength between carbon fiber reinforced composites and an additively manufactured (AM) AlSi10Mg counterpart. Extending applications to sandwich structures, both, bulk and honeycomb structured counterparts were considered. Double-Lap Shear specimens were fabricated in a co-curing process, and further investigated regarding the bond efficiency. Results were compared to the state-of-the-art joints applying an adhesive film layer. It was observed that surface roughness is not pivotal when using such adhesive film. In contrast, higher surface roughness generally tends to promote adhesion strength by promoting mechanical interlocking and increasing the available bond area. Further coating with organosilanes and diamond like carbon increases the surface energy and reduces the contact angle thus improving surface wettability by the matrix resin. In consequence, an improvement of up to 30% in adhesion strength was observed in case of coating the metallic surface with diamond like carbon. Prior surface polishing of the additively manufactured parts does not significantly affect the bond quality and is therefore not recommended.

Interfacial bonding in multi-material structures is crucial for component performance. The influence of organosilane and Diamond-Like Carbon coatings were investigated for improved bond strength of additively manufactured AlSi10Mg, CuCr1Zr and Ti6Al4V with carbon fiber reinforced polymer composite. Treated surfaces were evaluated by surface energy, contact angle, film adhesion and thickness measurements, SEM-EDX analysis and double-lap-shear tests. Coating improved the bond strength by around 20 % in case of AlSi10Mg and CuCr1Zr, whereas treatment did not show any significant effect for Ti6Al4V.