Fluorination of flax fibers for improving the interfacial compatibility of eco-composites

Because of their specific properties, vegetal fibers are increasingly used as sustainable polymer reinforcements for eco-composites. Nevertheless, polar character hinders them from being more frequently at industrial scale due to incompatibility with mostly dispersive polymers (the cheapest and most common ones). In this study, direct fluorination treatment was carried out covalently graft fluorine atom the outmost surface flax fibers. Such a grafting has been proved by FT-IR, 19F NMR XPS spectroscopies, these characterizations allowed understand chemical change treatment. This modification induced an augmentation fibers, significantly lowering component energy without significant component. Young's modulus also maintained. Thereby, treated become perfectly compatible hydrophobic polymer, improvement in mechanical performance resulting composite is expected according literature.