Executive Summary : | The advancement in technology enables the researchers to develop lightweight high-strength carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites for various sectors like aerospace, automotive, naval, railways, wind turbine blades, military equipments, civil structures, medical equipments, sporting goods, radar and telecommunications [1]. From 1960, the CFRPs becomes most favourable material for various industries due to their unique characteristics such as light weight, high strength, high stiffness, resistance to fatigue, corrosion and damping vibrations, high-electrical conductivity, high thermal and chemical stability, low coefficient of thermal expansion and organic inertness [2-5]. But, CFRPs have several drawbacks like brittleness of polymer matrix, low crack resistance, weak matrix-fibre interface that lead to disastrous failure and delamination of CFRPs [6,7]. Researchers tried various types of nanoparticles such as alumina, silica, boron nitride, carbon nanotubes (CNTs), graphene, etc. and achieved high strength, better crack resistance and better other properties of the CFRPs [5,8-12]. But, limited success has been achieved in terms of controlling the much needed fibre-matrix interface and delamination due to the agglomeration of the nanostructures. Researchers are still trying different strategies like using wavy CNTs, chemically modified CNTs and graphene [12-14] to minimize the existing problems of CFRPs. However, the chemical modification of CNTs is an expensive and slow procedure which also deteriorates the structure of CNTs [15]. A recently developed extremely strong self-entangled CNT-ZnO tetrapod network [16] that can hold one lakh times its weight and capable of transforming compressive forces into tensile forces due to its non-agglomerating nature [16] can be an ideal material to solve the serious problems of weak fibre-matrix interface and delamination of CFRPs. The unique combination of self-entangled 3D CNT/t-ZnO network, unlike other nanomaterials, restricts their agglomeration in viscous epoxy polymers. Additionally, the unique 3D structure of ZnO tetrapods offers the mechanical interlocking already verified by Xin et al. [17]. They joined classically non-adhesive polymers Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) and Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMs) using ZnO tetrapods derived mechanical interlocking without any chemical surface modification. Thus, the self-entangled CNT/ZnO tetrapod based fillers can play a vital role for solving the delamination and weak polymer-fibre interface issue in carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites. |