Plasma erosion for the development of the structure of carbon fiber reinforced carbons

Carbon fiber reinforced carbon forms a class of materials with a very good broad range of material parameters. In several technical areas they are already successfully applied, such as aircraft and rocket technique, chemical plants and equipment, energy technique, and implants in human medicine. A difficult problem for an intensified technical application of CC's is the uncertainty in the materials characterisation, particularly in the description of the structure-properties-relationships. For that purpose it is necessary to get access to the structure of CC's. A promising procedure to achieve this task is the plasma erosion or plasma oxidation of the surface of material samples. This contribution describes the technical equipment, the first systematic test series, the results and their-so far only qualitative-interpretation.