Anti-oxidation coatings are the key technique for carbon/carbon (C/C) composites used as the thermal structural materials. The microstructure and oxidation behavior of several kinds of high-performance ceramic coatings for C/C composites prepared in Northwestern Polytechnical University were introduced in this paper. It showed that the ceramic coatings such as SiC, Si-MoSi2, SiC-MoSi2, Al2O3-mullite-SiC and SiC/yttrium silicate/glass coatings possessed excellent oxidation resistance at high temperatures, and some of these coatings were characterized with excellent thermal shock resistance. The SiC-MoSi2 coating system has the best oxidation protective property, which can effectively protect C/C composites from oxidation up to 1973 K. In addition, the protection and failure reasons of some coatings at high temperature were also provided.
The work reported in this paper relates to preparation and characterization of carbon nanomaterials by CVD method on different substrates by decomposition of certain hydrocarbons at 550-800℃ using a horizontal quartz tube reactor. Monometallic and bimetallic catalyst system of iron and nickel were used for the preparation of different carbon nanomaterials. The influence of various parameters such as substrate/catalyst preparation parameters, the nature of substrate, catalyst concentration, reaction time and temperature on the growth, yield and alignment of carbon nanotubes has been studied. The characterization of carbon nanomaterials has been carried out using SEM, TEM and TGA. The carbon nanomaterials developed were vertically aligned on a large area of flat quartz substrate.
Mesoporous activated carbon (AC) was prepared from aged petroleum coke through chemical activation. The AC has a specific surface area of 1733 m2/g and a mean pore diameter of 2.37 nm. The volume fraction of 2 to 4nm pores is 56.74%. At a current density of 10 mA/cm2, a specific capacitance of 240 F/g is achieved representing the use factor of the surface area of 69.2%. And the electrical double layer capacitor (EDLC) based on the AC shows an excellent power performance. This result suggests that the presence of high fraction of mesopores can effectively increase the adsorption efficiency of the specific surface area of the AC and enhance the power performance of EDLC based on the efficient surface area of the AC.
Crushed peach stone shells were impregnated with H3PO4 of increasing concentrations (30-70%) followed by heat treatment at 773 K for 3 h. Produced carbons (ACs) were characterized by N2 adsorption at 77 K using the BET-equation and the α-method. High surface area microporous ACs were obtained, with enhanced internal pore volume, as function of % H3PO4. Adsorption isotherms from aqueous solution were determined for methylene blue (MB) and p-nitrophenol (PNP), as representatives for dye and phenolics pollutant molecules. Application of the Langmuir model proved the high limiting capacity towards both solute molecules, MB was uptaken in increasing amounts as function of H3PO4 concentration and generated porosity. High removal of PNP was almost the same irrespective of porosity characteristics. Competitive adsorption of H2O molecules on the hydrophilic carbon surface seems to partially reduce the available area to the PNP molecules. Application of the pseudo-second order law described well the fast adsorption (≤ 120 min) at two initial dye concentrations.
Taguchi methodology has been applied to get an idea about the parameters related to the chemical vapour deposition technique, which influences the formation of semiconducting carbon thin film of a desired band gap. L9 orthogonal array was used for this purpose. The analysis based on Taguchi methodology suggests that amongst the parameters selected, the temperature of pyrolysis significantly controls the magnitude of band gap (46%). Sintering time has a small influence (30%) on the band gap formation and other factors have almost no influence on the band gap formation. Moreover this analysis suggests that lower temperature of pyrolysis (≤ 750℃) and lower time of sintering (≤ 1 h) should be preferred to get carbon thin film with the desired band gap of 1.2eV.
Like bamboo-sprouts after rains, numerous subμm-sized pyrocarbon whiskers growth on the Mullite (3Al2O3·2H2O) substrate could be observed through a looking glass during methane pyrolysis at the temperature of 1050℃ in this study. If the surface of substrate would be scrubbed strongly with iron metals, then finely sticked iron particles were more effective catalytic for nm-sized whisker growth. Numerous fine flakes of pyrolytic carbon were hanging by invisible nm-whiskers as like as small spiders hanging by a spiderweb. This is the identification of nm-sized whisker growth. Therefore if the pyrolysis would be stopped at the initial stage of the whisker growth, the primary lengthening growth was nm-sized whisker. So could we vary arbitrarily sizes of whisker from nm- to μm-sizes. But μm- and nm-whiskers grown with the different growth mechanism; the former was straight and the latter has twigs, The lengthening growth of whisker was depended on the flow pattern pyrolysis species on the active sites of substrate and on the growth duration. We could obtained straight whisker length of 10~20 μm/min during the primary growth and laboratory spiral whisker of 30~40 μm-diameter/hr during the secondary growth.
In this work, the effects of atmospheric oxygen plasma treatment of carbon fibers on mechanical interfacial properties of carbon fibers-reinforced epoxy matrix composites was studied. The surface properties of the carbon fibers were determined by acid/base values, Fourier-transform infrared spectrometer (FT-IR), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses. Also, the crack resistance properties of the composites were investigated in critical stress intensity factor (KIC), and critical strain energy release rate mode II (GIIC) measurements. As experimental results, FT-IR of the carbon fibers showed that the carboxyl/ester groups (C=O) at 1632 cm-1 and hydroxyl group (O-H) at 3450 cm-1 were observed for the plasma treated carbon fibers, and the treated carbon fibers had the higher O-H peak intensity than that of the untreated ones. The XPS results also indicated that the O1S/C1S ratio of the carbon fiber surfaces treated by the oxygen plasma led to development of oxygen-containing functional groups. The mechanical interfacial properties of the composites, including KIC (critical stress intensity factor) and GIIC (critical strain energy release rate mode II), were also improved for the oxygen plasma-treated carbon fibersreinforced composites. These results could be explained that the oxygen plasma treatment played an important role to increase interfacial adhesions between carbon fibers and epoxy matrix resins in our composite system.