Toray develops ultra-high-strength carbon fibre
Toray Industries, Inc., (Japan) announced that it has developed TORAYCA™ T1200, which is the world’s highest strength carbon fibre. This new offering should help shrink environmental footprints by lightening carbon-fibre reinforced plastic materials. Its applications should range from sporting and leisure goods to aircraft.
According to Toray, companies in various countries began manufacturing carbon fibres, increasing supplies of conventional high-strength offerings. Demand for high-strength carbon fibres has risen, necessitating a response from Toray. The company accordingly set about refining its proprietary nanoscale structural control technology to design and achieve an internal structure with high toughness.
Applying this technology led Toray to create TORAYCA™ T1200, with a tensile strength of 8.0 gigapascals (or GPa, which is around 100-kilogram force per square millimetre). This is more than 10% higher than the figure of 7.0 for TORAYCA™ T1100. The latter is currently the highest tensile strength. Its diverse applications include golf shafts, bicycle accessories, fishing rods, and other sports, leisure equipment, motorsports, as well as aviation and space. The company developed T1200 at a new facility within the Ehime Plant. Diverse applications will include aircraft.
Toray began selling carbon fibres in 1971. It has supplied TORAYCA™ for such applications as compressed natural gas and high-pressure hydrogen tanks, automobiles, aircraft, and sporting equipment. In 1986, the company developed TORAYCA™ T1000, which was then world’s highest strength carbon fibre, and has since remained a global leader in that respect. In recent years, Toray further expanded the potential of carbon fibres by commercializing TORAYCA™ T1100.
| Product name | Tensile strength (GPa) | Tensile modulus (GPa) | Strain at failure (%) | Yield (g/m) | Density (g/cm³) | Filament count |
| T1200 | 8.0 | 315 | 2.5 | 0.48 | 1.82 | 12,000 |
| T1100 | 7.0 | 324 | 2.2 | 0.51 1.01 | 1.79 | 12,000 24,000 |
| T800S | 5.9 | 294 | 2.0 | 1.03 | 1.80 | 24,000 |
Reference
Basic Properties of T1200 ultra-high-strength carbon fibre and strength and modulus maps