Processing of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Composites by Three Dimensional Photolithography

The reinforcement of photoresins with continuous carbon fibers is discussed in this paper. The processing was conducted in an automated desktop photolithography unit (ADPU) developed and built in-house. Continuous fibers were added in situ to the photoresin to obtain composite samples containing over 20 vol% of the fibers. The tensile strength of these composites improved by at least a factor of 2 as compared to that of the pure photoresins. It is also noted that the photoresin could be partially cured to develop sufficient green strength in the composite samples even though the fibers are opaque to ultraviolet radiation. These results indicate the potential of this technique to produce functional composite components in conjunction with a 3-D photolithography apparatus.