Electrophoretic deposition and thermal annealing of a graphene oxide thin film on carbon fiber surfaces

Graphene oxide (GO) was employed as the sizing agent for continuous carbon fiber (CF) tows by an electrophoretic deposition and subsequent thermal annealing. The GO sheets were tightly coated and covalently attached to CF surfaces. Such reduced GO-deposited CFs exhibit a significant increase in surface roughness as compared to the bare CFs, which leads to an improvement in the interfacial shear strength between CFs and resin matrix through enhanced mechanical interlocking.