Turning the enemy into a friend: Tailored self-assembly of zinc tetraphthalocyanine on rapidly activated carbon fiber through tamed microwave discharging

Abstract The practicable application of microwave irradiation (MWI) on surface modification of carbon-based materials was greatly limited by severe arc discharging, since the arc discharging always appeared as an enemy to worsen and even damage these materials due to its strong etching function. Herein, the synthesized zinc-5,10,15,20-tetra(4-aminophenyl) porphyrin (ZnTAPc) was properly introduced to tame the arc discharging to become a useful friend by accepting the electrons excited from carbon fiber (CF) during MWI in H2O. By controlling MWI time, morphology transformation of ZnTAPc from microspheres (Monomer) to rice-like microparticle (J-type aggregation) could be tailored on ZnTAPc modified CF (MCF). The uniform dispersed layer of rice-like ZnTAPc showed strong chemical bonding and π-π conjugation with CF, which contributed to hydrophobic surface construction and obvious increase in interfacial strength of MCF-10/EP compared to CF-Commercial/EP. In particular, compared to CF-Commerical and CF-Commerical/EP, the hexane absorption capacity of MCF-10 was increased by 59.6 %, and the interfacial shearing strength (IFSS) of MCF-10/EP was increased by 86.6 %. It was showed that the tamed arc discharging was a kind of carbon material modification method with great potential in the field of composite materials and hydrophobic materials.