Design and Experiment of Polyimide/Ti Wire Composite with the Interface Chemically Grafted through Carbon Nanotubes

Abstract Herein, an efficient method is proposed to develop polyimide (PI)/titanium (Ti) wire composite with the interface chemically grafted through carbon nanotubes (CNTs). In order to reduce the research cost and blindness, nine strategies are designed herein to improve the interface compatibility of PI/Ti by using the simulation approach, and then an ideal solution is obtained to prepare the new composite material. The PI/Ti simulation model with interface grafted using different CNTs functionalized through ester and amide bonds is established. It is found that the interface cohesive energy can be improved by 276.7% by grafting COOH@MWCNTs through ester bond. Then, based on the simulation results, the PI/Ti wire composite with the interface chemically grafted through COOH@MWCNTs is prepared successfully, which exhibits an increase of 243.3% in interface shear strength (IFSS). Furthermore, the result also indicates that when the orientation of grafted COOH@MWCNTs is perpendicular to the Ti surface, its interface performance achieves the maximum with an IFSS increase of 301.3%. This method can also be used to improving the interface performance of Ti/Cf/polymerized monomer reactant (PMR) polyimide hybrid composite laminates (also known as TiGr).