Preparation of carbon fiber composites by chemical coating

To optimize the processing conditions of chemical metal coating for preparing carbon fiber composites, X-ray diffractions (XRD) and scanning electron microscope (SEM) were used to determine the composition and observe the morphology of the coating. Experiment results show that the factors that affect the coating quality are PH value of the solution, temperature, coated load, carbon fiber length and the stirring way. Under experimental environment, the optimized copper coating conditions are T=60°C, pH=12, loading 60 mg/250 mL and the length of the carbon fiber is 1 mm. SEM of chemical copper coating of nickel-carbon fiber (CNCF) shows that the coating is uniform with good quality and the copper and nickel present poly-crystal status. The observed surface copper thickness of CNCF is about 1 μm, which nearly coincides with the calculation thickness of 0.96 μm.