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Full-Color Tunable and Highly Fire-Retardant Colored Carbon Fibers

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Abstract

Carbon fibers (CFs) are widely used in various cutting-edge fields, such as aerospace, military, automobiles, and sports, owing to their unique combination of excellent mechanical properties, good thermal stability, and lightweight. However, their inherent super-black appearance makes it difficult to satisfy the aesthetic/fashion requirements of the colorful world, and the flammability of CFs severely limits their practical utilization in high-temperature and other extreme environments. Herein, we fabricated full-color tunable colored CFs on a large-scale via atomic layer deposition, based on the monolayer film interference strategy. CFs exhibited brilliant colors and excellent environmental durability in extreme environments, such as intense ultraviolet (UV) irradiation, accelerated laundering, friction, high-temperature, and low-temperature treatments. Colored CFs also exhibited excellent fire-retardant performance that could withstand alcohol-lamp flame burning for 60 min. Our work provides insights into an innovative material/structural design that can help achieve rapid development of the CF industry and global carbon neutrality/sustainability.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Y. Huang from Tsinghua University for the help in characterizing colored CFs samples. Funding: This research was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51903008 and U1910209), Science and Technology Research Project of the Educational Commission of Hubei Province (D20211703), Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. 2023433), and Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Province (Grant No. 20210302124128). Open Foundation of State Key Laboratory of Bio-Fibers and Eco-Textiles from Qingdao University (Grant No. 2020105), Hubei Key Laboratory of Digital Textile Equipment, Wuhan Textile University (Grant No. DTL 2022006), National Engineering Laboratory for Modern Silk, Soochow University (Grant No. SDGC2148), and National Local Joint Laboratory for Advanced Textile Processing and Clean Production (Grant No. 17).

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Author notes

  1. Yuxin Luo and Yu Zhang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of New Textile Materials and Advanced Processing Technologies and Hubei Key Laboratory of Digital Textile Equipment, Wuhan Textile University, Wuhan, 430200, People’s Republic of China

    Yuxin Luo, Yu Zhang, Tonghe Xing, Annan He, Zhiyu Huang, Xin Liu, Fengxiang Chen & Weilin Xu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Coal Conversion, CAS Key Laboratory of Carbon Materials and Analytical Instrumentation Center, Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Taiyuan, 030001, People’s Republic of China

    Shichao Zhao, Yequn Liu, Yuxiu Yu & Yong Qin

  3. State Key Laboratory of Bio-Fibers and Eco-Textiles, Institute of Functional Textiles and Advanced Materials, College of Textiles and Clothing, Qingdao University, Qingdao, 266071, People’s Republic of China

    Zhiyu Huang

  4. National Joint Laboratory for Advanced Textile Processing and Clean Production, Wuhan Textile University, Wuhan, 430200, People’s Republic of China

    Zihui Liang

Authors
  1. Yuxin Luo
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  2. Yu Zhang
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Correspondence to Shichao Zhao, Fengxiang Chen or Weilin Xu.

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Luo, Y., Zhang, Y., Xing, T. et al. Full-Color Tunable and Highly Fire-Retardant Colored Carbon Fibers. Adv. Fiber Mater. 5, 1618–1631 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42765-023-00294-4

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