Adhesion activation of Twaron^® aramid fibres studied with low‐energy ion scattering and x‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy

Abstract

The properties of the interphase between Twaron aramid fibres and polymer matrix systems can be optimized by a surface treatment process of the fibres. In this work, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and low-energy ion scattering have been used to analyse the surface layers, whereas the adhesion was measured by a bundle pull-out experiment. From the results, we succeeded in establishing a relation between the surface treatment, the resulting chemical/elemental surface composition and the adhesion to an epoxy matrix.

Effects of Twaron fiber surface treatment by air dielectric barrier discharge plasma on the interfacial adhesion in fiber reinforced composites

“…After the 27.6 W/cm 3 , 12 s air DBD plasma treatment, a small increase from 76.6% to 77.3% of C concentration is observed, O concentration reduces from 21.5% to 18.7% with the decline of O/C from 0.281 to 0.242, whereas the N concentration increases dramatically from 1.9% to 4.0% with the N/C going up from 0.025 to 0.052. The presentations in references [22,27] show that there is scarcely any nitrogen present in the finish of Twaron fiber; furthermore, the change of N concentration on TRT surface in the preceding paragraph indicates that there is no incorporation of nitrogen element into the fiber surface with the air DBD plasma. Therefore, one can be sure that the remarkable increase of N concentration on TFT surface originates from the body structure of aramid fiber, suggesting that more surface of naked Twaron fiber appears with the removal of the oily finish by plasma etching and/or chemical reactions.…”

The effect of atmospheric‐pressure air plasma discharge power on adhesive properties of aramid fibers

“…Twaron fibers before and after the air DBD plasma treatment continuously passed through the PPESK/DMAc solution, wound compactly on a frame, and then formed monolayer impregnating samples. The solvent was removed by drying in an oven (120 C/1 h, 175 C/3 h) till the samples were of constant weight, forming Twaron/PPESK unidirectional prepregs, which were then cut (40 3 80 mm 2 ) and molded into unidirectional fibrous composite specimens utilizing the compression molding technique. The molding parameters are listed in Table 1.…”

The Effect of Oily Finish Components on the Adhesion Between Aramid Fibers and Rubber

“…In order to study the adhesion activation process in detail, and to find relations between the fiber surface treatment, the resulting microscopic interphase structure and the macroscopic rubber properties, a combination of various analytical techniques, such as X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (ToFSIMS), Low Energy Ion Scattering (LEIS) and Scanning Force Microscopy (SFM) [9][10][11], has been used in the past. These techniques allow studying, e.g., the local surface chemistry (XPS, ToFSIMS, LEIS) and the surface physical microstructure (SFM).…”