Increasing the tensile property of unidirectional carbon/carbon composites by grafting carbon nanotubes onto carbon fibers by electrophoretic deposition

Although in-situ growing carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on carbon fibers could greatly increase the matrix-dominated mechanical properties of carbon/carbon composites (C/Cs), it always decreased the tensile strength of carbon fibers. In this work, CNTs were introduced into unidirectional carbon fiber (CF) preforms by electrophoretic deposition (EPD) and they were used to reinforce C/Cs. Effects of the content of CNTs introduced by EPD on tensile property of unidirectional C/Cs were investigated. Results demonstrated that EPD could be used as a simple and efficient method to fabricate carbon nanotube reinforced C/Cs (CNT-C/Cs) with excellent tensile strength, which pays a meaningful way to maximize the global performance of CNT-C/Cs.