Currently, the new round of global technological revolution and industrial transformation is accelerating. As a strategic and fundamental industry, new materials have become the commanding height of technological competition among countries worldwide. The upcoming 14th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) will map out a new blueprint for the high-quality development of China’s new materials industry. Against this backdrop, advanced structural materials represented by carbon fiber and its composites have been accorded a higher strategic position. Their development path will focus more on high performance, intelligence, and green sustainability. In particular, the layout in cutting-edge directions such as recyclable thermoplastic carbon fiber composites will become the key to breaking through resource and environmental constraints and realizing industrial transformation and upgrading.
Carbon fiber composites, with their excellent properties such as light weight, high strength, corrosion resistance, and fatigue resistance, are widely used in aerospace, rail transit, new energy vehicles, wind power equipment, high-end sports equipment and other fields. They are one of the core materials supporting the transformation of China’s manufacturing industry towards high-endization, intelligence, and greenization. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China’s carbon fiber industry achieved leapfrog development from "following" to "keeping pace" and even "leading" in some areas, with significant improvements in production capacity and technological level. However, facing the 14th Five-Year Plan, the challenges confronting the industry have become increasingly prominent: on the one hand, high-end products still need to be improved in terms of stability and consistency, and some key raw materials and core equipment rely on imports; on the other hand, traditional thermosetting carbon fiber composites are difficult to recycle, and most of them are disposed of by landfilling or incineration after being discarded, bringing a heavy environmental burden, which runs counter to China’s "dual carbon" strategic goals.
Therefore, the development of carbon fiber materials must not only continue to break through the "bottleneck" technologies of ultra-high-strength, high-modulus carbon fibers and their supporting resins but also deeply integrate the concept of green and low carbon into the entire chain of material R&D and manufacturing. Among them, recyclable thermoplastic carbon fiber composites are generally regarded as an important breakthrough to solve the bottleneck of sustainable industrial development and will surely become a strategic direction for key layout.
Different from traditional thermosetting resins, thermoplastic resins can be melted and reshaped when heated and solidified when cooled. This characteristic endows them with excellent recyclability and reprocessability. Through heating or solvent dissolution, the resin matrix in thermoplastic carbon fiber composites can be separated, and the carbon fibers can be recovered with high value for secondary molding, which greatly reduces resource consumption and carbon emissions. At the same time, thermoplastic composites also have the advantages of short molding cycle, high damage tolerance, and good resistance to humidity and heat, making them particularly suitable for fields such as automobiles and consumer electronics that have high requirements for production efficiency and environmental protection.
The layout of thermoplastic carbon fiber composites is expected to focus on three core aspects: first, strengthen basic research and development, increase efforts in tackling key technologies of high-performance thermoplastic resins (such as PEEK, PEKK, PPS, etc.) and their interface bonding technology with carbon fibers, and improve the comprehensive performance of materials; second, promote technological innovation, develop advanced manufacturing technologies such as automated fiber placement, rapid prototyping, and welding connection, reduce production costs, and improve industrialization efficiency; third, build a circular economy system, establish full-life-cycle management standards and recycling networks from material design, product manufacturing to recycling and reuse, and promote the formation of a closed-loop industrial chain of "production - use - recycling - regeneration".
It is foreseeable that China’s carbon fiber composite materials industry will accelerate its transformation from "scale expansion" to "quality and efficiency" and "green sustainability". The development of recyclable thermoplastic carbon fiber composites will not only enhance China’s strategic initiative in global new materials competition but also provide strong material support for achieving the "dual carbon" goals and building a beautiful China. In the next five years, the "green revolution" of new materials has quietly begun, and the carbon fiber industry is ushering in a new era of high-quality development.