Carbon nanomaterials based fiber sensors for highly sensitive and versatile in situ monitoring of composites manufacturing

Carbon nanomaterials (CNM) based sensor technology has offered a variety of promising strategies for enabling self-sensing and diagnosing functionalities for next-generation hierarchical composites. In comparison to excessive studies on detecting structural deformations and cracks, the technology for monitoring the manufacturing stage of composites using CNMs is rather limited. Based on continuous sensor fabrication protocols, we systematically investigate carbon nanotubes (CNTs) coated, graphene coated and carbon fiber enabled sensors for monitoring the complete molding process of composites through acquiring the real-time resistance change of sensors. Comparing to graphene-coated and carbon fibers with densely and continuously packed graphitic structures, the CNT coated fiber sensor with the entangled and loosely packed porous network shows far superior performance for sensing different processing stages of composites, including resin infiltration, gelation and curing.