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Mechanical and microstructural characterisation of multifunctional structural power composites
(2013)
Although the inherent anisotropy of polymer composites has presented daunting technical challenges, these materials now offer engineers considerable opportunities for efficient structural design. More recently, the advent of multifunctional composites which can fulfill more than one role within a system has attracted considerable interest, providing designers with exciting opportunities to innovate. Of particular interest here are structural power composites, which simultaneously carry mechanical load whilst storing/delivering electrical energy. Although the development of these composites is highly challenging, often with conflicting constituent requirements, the STORAGE consortium has had considerable success in the development of these materials for automotive applications.
The focus of this paper is structural supercapacitors, the basic architecture of a single cell of which is shown in Fig. 1. This entails two carbon fibre woven lamina (electrodes) which sandwich a glass fibre woven lamina (separator), all of which is embedded within a multifunctional matrix (electrolyte). This architecture has been the focus of the research to date, leading to components such as that shown in Fig.1 having been fabricated. This paper reports on the mechanical properties and microstructures of the different reinforcement and matrix combinations for structural supercapacitors.
Multifunctional composites which can fulfil more than one role within a system have attracted considerable interest. This work focusses on structural supercapacitors which simultaneously carry mechanical load whilst storing/delivering electrical energy. Critical mechanical properties (in-plane shear and in-plane compression performance) of two monofunctional and four multifunctional materials were characterised, which gave an insight into the relationships between these properties, the microstructures and fracture processes. The reinforcements included baseline T300 fabric, which was then either grafted or sized with carbon nanotubes, whilst the baseline matrix was MTM57, which was blended with ionic liquid and lithium salt (two concentrations) to imbue multifunctionality. The resulting composites exhibited a high degree of matrix heterogeneity, with the ionic liquid phase preferentially forming at the fibres, resulting in poor matrix-dominated properties. However, fibre-dominated properties were not depressed. Thus, it was demonstrated that these materials can now offer weight savings over conventional monofunctional systems when under modest loading.
The introduction of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) modifies bulk polymer properties, depending on intrinsic quality, dispersion, alignment, interfacial chemistry and mechanical properties of the nanofiller. These effects can be exploited to enhance the matrices of conventional microscale fibre-reinforced polymer composites, by using primary reinforcing fibres grafted with CNTs. This paper presents a methodology that combines atomic force microscopy, polarised Raman spectroscopy, and nanoindentation techniques, to study the distribution, alignment and orientation of CNTs in the vicinity of epoxy-embedded micrometre-scale silica fibres, as well as, the resulting local mechanical properties of the matrix. Raman maps of key features in the CNT spectra clearly show the CNT distribution and orientation, including a parted morphology associated with long grafted CNTs. The hardness and indentation modulus of the epoxy matrix were improved locally by 28% and 24%, respectively, due to the reinforcing effects of CNTs. Moreover, a slower stress relaxation was observed in the epoxy region containing CNTs, which may be due to restricted molecular mobility of the matrix. The proposed methodology is likely to be relevant to further studies of nanocomposites and hierarchical composites.