Cellulose Nanocrystal-enabled Manufacturing of Carbon Nanotube/Carbon fiber Polymer Composites

纤维素纳米晶制造碳纳米管/碳纤维聚合物复合材料

基本信息

批准号：
1930277
负责人：
Amir Asadi
金额：
$ 39.04万
依托单位：
Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2019
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2019-11-01 至 2024-10-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1930277&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Cellulose Nanocrystal enabled Manufacturing Carbon

项目摘要

Composite material systems are manufactured by mixing and binding reinforcement materials into a matrix to realize desirable properties such as lightweight and high strength. There are many processing methods to incorporate reinforcement materials, such as carbon fibers and carbon nanotubes, into polymer matrices but most result in lower-than-expected properties due to poor dispersion and weak adhesion. This research establishes a new manufacturing process, based on cellulose nanocrystals, that integrates pristine nanomaterials into the polymer matrix without the need for extensive chemical or processing efforts. The new process enables the production of nanostructured hybrid polymer matrix composites at large scale with desired structure and performance with fewer processing steps, leading to economic manufacturing of these structures with impact to the U.S. aerospace, automotive, marine and defense industries. This research is an interdisciplinary effort that involves processing and manufacturing science, materials science, and chemistry and trains the next generation of highly skilled engineers for the U.S. workforce and provides unique research opportunities for women and underrepresented minority groups in STEM fields. Owing to their superior properties, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and carbon fibers (CFs) have been extensively used to create nanostructures in polymer matrix composites (PMCs). There are various synthesis and processing techniques to integrate CNTs/CFs in PMCs. However, these techniques generally face a number of hurdles such as poor dispersion, weak interfacial and interlayer adhesion, lack of control on structure formation and lack of scalability. Particularly, the current lack of understanding in nanoscale interactions and lack of capability to tailor these interactions have decelerated manufacturing of hybrid nanostructured PMCs with tailorable performance. This project aims to fill this knowledge gap by providing fundamental understanding of how nanostructures are formed from molecular-level interactions and how they are translated into interfacial bonding and interlaminar strength in nanostructured hybrid PMCs. The new knowledge generated in this research leads to a new processing science where assisting nanomaterials, i.e. cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs), are employed to harness the architecture of hybrid composites without the need for costly and time-consuming processing. The research team performs density functional theory and molecular dynamics calculations in conjunction with experimental spectroscopy and characterization to test the hypothesis that CNCs dictate the molecular interactions and determine the formation of microstructure at micro- and meso-scales in nanostructured CNT/CF polymer composites.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

复合材料系统是通过将增强材料混合并粘合到基体中来制造的，以实现轻质和高强度等理想的性能。有许多加工方法可将碳纤维和碳纳米管等增强材料掺入聚合物基体中，但大多数方法由于分散性差和粘合力弱而导致性能低于预期。这项研究建立了一种基于纤维素纳米晶体的新制造工艺，将原始纳米材料集成到聚合物基质中，而不需要大量的化学或加工工作。新工艺能够以更少的加工步骤大规模生产具有所需结构和性能的纳米结构杂化聚合物基复合材料，从而实现这些结构的经济制造，对美国航空航天、汽车、船舶和国防工业产生影响。这项研究是一项跨学科工作，涉及加工和制造科学、材料科学和化学，为美国劳动力培训下一代高技能工程师，并为 STEM 领域的女性和代表性不足的少数群体提供独特的研究机会。由于其优异的性能，碳纳米管（CNT）和碳纤维（CF）已被广泛用于在聚合物基复合材料（PMC）中创建纳米结构。有多种合成和加工技术可将 CNT/CF 集成到 PMC 中。然而，这些技术通常面临许多障碍，例如分散性差、界面和层间粘附力弱、结构形成缺乏控制以及缺乏可扩展性。特别是，目前对纳米级相互作用缺乏了解，并且缺乏定制这些相互作用的能力，导致具有可定制性能的混合纳米结构 PMC 的制造速度减慢。该项目旨在通过提供对分子级相互作用如何形成纳米结构以及如何将其转化为纳米结构混合 PMC 中的界面键合和层间强度的基本了解来填补这一知识空白。这项研究产生的新知识催生了一种新的加工科学，其中辅助纳米材料，即纤维素纳米晶体（CNC），被用来利用混合复合材料的结构，而不需要昂贵且耗时的加工。研究小组结合实验光谱学和表征进行密度泛函理论和分子动力学计算，以检验 CNC 决定分子相互作用的假设，并确定纳米结构 CNT/CF 聚合物复合材料中微米和介观尺度的微观结构的形成。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。