Arraying calcium carbonate core-shell nanoparticles densely on carbon fibers by coordination effect for interfacial enhancement of polydicyclopentadiene/carbon fiber felt (PDCPD/CFF) composites

For carbon fiber-reinforced polymer composites (CFRPCs), the final properties strongly rely on the interfacial adhesion which is related not only to the fiber surface roughness but also to interaction between the components. Therefore, simultaneously improving fiber surface roughness and optimizing its reactivity via convenient method is of great value for high performance CFRPCs. Herein, by arraying NPA (calcium carbonate as the core while calcium norbornene dicarboxylate as the shell) nanoparticles on acidized carbon fiber felt (HCFF) surface, the hybrid carbon fiber felt (HCFF@NPA) with both rough surface and high reactivity was synthesized, and its strengthening effect for polydicyclopentadiene (PDCPD) was investigated. The results indicated that HCFF@NPA could form a robust interface with PDCPD matrix, which was ascribed to the rough hybrid fiber surface and copolymerization of norbornene units on NPA with DCPD monomers. The obtained PDCPD/HCFF@NPA composites exhibited significantly enhanced interlaminar shear strength and flexural strength of 24.1 ± 0.3 MPa, 243.4 ± 4.0 MPa as compared with those of 10.8 ± 0.2 MPa, 145.2 ± 14.7 MPa for the pristine PDCPD/CFF sample. This work paves a novel pathway for designing hydride fibers with nanoparticles and high-performance fiber-reinforced polymer composites.