Application of High-contrast X-Ray Computerized Tomography to Carbon Fiber/Polymer Composites

Three-dimensional real-space images of the carbon fiber (CF)/polymer composites were obtained by a high-contrast X-ray computerized tomography (CT). Since both CF and polymers do not include heavy atoms, CF has not been supposed to be suitable to X-ray CT observation. In this study, we used the X-ray CT apparatus which is designed to enhance the contrast of the materials consisting only of light-weight atoms. Besides the usage of the appropriate apparatus, the experimental conditions were found to be important : cutting the sample into a thin rod, and obtaining sufficient number of projections. In our case, we used 1mm × 1mm × 4mm sample, and 720 projections with 0.25 degree intervals in order to obtain the 3μm voxel resolution in the reconstructed three-dimensional images. Eventually, each CF in polystyrene was clearly visualized in three dimensions.