Institut Charles Sadron News

Fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composite materials are of great interest in the field of aircraft and automotive industry especially as substitutes to metal components. However, the development of such materials requires the stabilization of the interface fiber-matrix to obtain materials with enhanced mechanical properties. The synthesis of a library of sequence-defined oligomers based on phenylalanine and aliphatic chains and the investigation of their adsorption on Kevlar fibers was a part of the work conducted by Jeroen Louwsma during his PhD working in the context of the EUROSEQUENCE project between the Institut Charles Sadron and PSA Group. This work has been recently published in Polymer. His results showed that the oligomer with sixteen phenylalanine and valeric spacers intercalated every four phenylalanine exhibited the roughest surface on Kevlar fibers and the highest adsorption density. This work paves the way to a new approach to develop interfacial agents for fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composite materials.