Adhesion activation of Twaron® aramid fibres studied with low-energy ion scattering and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy

The properties of the interphase between Twaron (R) aramid fibres and polymer matrix systems can be optimized by a surface treatment process of the fibres. In this work, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and low-energy ion scattering have been used to analyse the surface layers, whereas the adhesion was measured by a bundle pull-out experiment. From the results, we succeeded in establishing a relation between the surface treatment, the resulting chemical/elemental surface composition and the adhesion to an epoxy matrix. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.