Science and Technology Daily (Reporter Wang Zhuhua and Intern Qu Yizhen)
Carbon/carbon composites are one of the key materials widely used in aerospace, nuclear, and semiconductor industries with high tensile strength. However, their low flexural strength severely limits the application of carbon/carbon composites in bending members.
Recently, the reporter learned from Hainan University that Prof. Li Jianlin's team has cooperated with Donghua University, Pingxiang College on relevant subjects. They adopted a new process of preparation technology in the research to crack the application difficulties of carbon/carbon composites in extreme environments.
Prof. Li Jianlin proposed the principle of phase change expansion sintering, which involves uniformly coating nano diamond particles on the surface of woven carbon fiber cloth. After stacking and sintering, the onion-like fullerenes generated between the layers of the fiber cloth firmly bond the carbon fiber cloth together. The graphite onions located at the intersection of the woven fiber bundles form a unique "mortise and tenon structure" between the layers of the fiber cloth, further strengthening the mechanical properties of the sintered block. Its bending strength reaches up to 1.2 GPa.
It is reported that this research creates a new method of preparing carbon/carbon composites with ultra-high bending strength, avoiding serious environmental pollution, high energy consumption and long preparation cycle and problems in other traditional carbon/carbon composites preparation process. It has solved the problem of restricting the application of carbon/carbon composites in the bending components due to the low bending strength. The research findings have been authorized by three relevant patents.
The results were published in Journal of Materials Science & Technology (English Version), an international academic journal in the field of structural materials, under the title of "Ultra-high bending strength of laminated carbon composites by mortise-and-tenon structure".
