Electroplating technique was applied to coat carbon fibers with nickel. Before plating, the initial fibers were pretreated to improve the wettability in bath. The electroplating parameters were optimized to obtain high-quality nickel-coated carbon fibers, and the effects on plating were studied. The coated carbon fibers were characterized by SEM, XRD, and XPS. The coatings are uniform, smooth, bright, and adherent to carbon fibers not only along length but also along the diameter of the filaments, and mainly composed of pure nickel. Metal-carbon-oxygen bonds are present at the interface between nickel coatings and fibers, which provides the interfacial binding force. The results of performance tests showed that the nickel-coated fibers possess a good bonding strength not less than 78.5 kPa, and exhibit excellent oxidation resistance at high temperature. Compared with the initial fibers, the wettability with aluminum is also improved obviously.
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