Fabrication of Fiber-Reinforced Polymer Ceramic Composites by Wet Electrospinning

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel wet electrospinning method to create fiber-reinforced polymer ceramic composites using a reactive ceramic precursor gel as a collector, demonstrating promising mechanical properties and scalability.

Contribution

The study presents a new wet electrospinning technique utilizing a reactive gel collector to produce fiber-reinforced polymer ceramic composites, showing initial mechanical improvements.

Findings

29% increase in indentation modulus

22% increase in indentation hardness

Process viability demonstrated

Abstract

We propose a novel approach of wet electrospinning to yield fiber-reinforced polymer ceramic composites, where a reactive ceramic precursor gel is used as a collector. We illustrate our approach by generating polyethylene oxide (PEO) fibers in a potassium silicate gel; the gel is later activated using metakaolin to yield a ceramic-0.5 wt% PEO fiber composite. An increase of 29% and 22% is recorded for the fabricated polymer ceramic composites in terms of indentation modulus and indentation hardness respectively. Our initial findings demonstrate the process viability and might lead to a potentially scalable manufacturing approach for fiber-reinforced polymer ceramic composites.