Seed-assisted hydrothermal growth of monoclinic copper oxide nanostructures on carbon fiber fabric for hierarchical composites.

The processing and morphological examination of copper oxide (CuO) nanostructures under varied concentrations and processing temperatures were explored in this research. A two-step seed-assisted hydrothermal approach was used to fabricate CuO nanostructures embedded in the surface of plain-woven carbon fiber fabric (WCF), with seeding followed by growth treatments with controlled chemical precursors. Three major factors are taken in the experimentation such as seed cycles, growth solution, and hydrothermal duration. By adjusting the CuO molar concentrations and controlling the growth temperature in the hydrothermal processing for different set of durations, several nanostructure morphologies of CuO such as petal-like, cuboid-like, buds-like nanorods, and nanoflakes were formed. The field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) and Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) spectra were used to evaluate diverse morphologies and their elemental compositions. It was discovered that the length of the growth treatment and the number of seeding treatments had a significant impact on the growth of nanostructures. The notion of growing CuO nanostructures directly onto WCF to increase the interfacial parameter of plain carbon fiber polymer composites was proposed in this study, which is a better strategy for secondary reinforcement than adding carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into the matrix. For the construction of laminated hybrid composites using the vacuum assisted resin transfer molding process (VARTM), Epoxy resin was utilized as the matrix material, which was reinforced with generated CuO nanostructures on WCF. The contact surface area between the molecules of the carbon fibers increases due to bonding of nanostructures at the interfaces thus, the load transmission will also increase. This may be responsible for the enhancement in the strength and delamination property of the resulting composite material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]