Carbon fibers (CFs) are considered promising composite materials for various applications. However, the high cost of CFs (as much as $26 per kg) limits their practical use in the automobile and energy industries. In this study, we developed a continuous stabilization process for manufacturing low-cost CFs. We employed a textile-grade polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fiber as a low-cost precursor and UV irradiation technique to shorten the thermal stabilization time. We confirmed that UV irradiation on the textile-grade PAN fibers could lower the initial thermal stabilization temperature and also lead to a higher reaction. These resulted in a shorter overall stabilization time and enhancement of the tensile properties of textilegrade PAN-based CFs. Our study found that only 70 min of stabilization time with UV irradiation was required to prepare textile-grade PAN-based low-cost CFs with a tensile strength of 2.37 ± 0.22GPa and tensile modulus of 249 ± 5 GPa.

In this present work, the effect of additional heat-treatment (AHT) in the range from 1800℃ to 2400℃ on the chemical composition, morphology, microstructure, tensile properties, electrical resistivity, and thermal stability of commercial polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-based carbon fibers was explored by means of elemental analysis, electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction analysis, single fiber tensile testing, two-probe electrical resistivity testing, and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The characterization results were in agreement with each other. The results clearly demonstrated that AHTs up to 2400℃ played a significant role in further contributing not only to the enhancement of carbon content, fiber morphology, and tensile modulus, but also to the reduction of fiber diameter, inter-graphene layer distance, and electrical resistivity of "as-received" carbon fibers without AHT. The present study suggests that key properties of commercial PAN-based carbon fibers of an intermediate grade can be further improved by proprietarily adding heat-treatment without applying tension in a batch process.

탄소/페놀릭 복합재의 삭마 미세구조와 특성에 대하여 설명하였다. 삭마현상은 추진제와 산화제 사이의 반응에 의한 수증기와 탄산가스의 몰분율에 의해 좌우된다. 그러나, 이 연구논문은 삭마현상이 탄소섬유의 직조형태, 직조밀도, tow크기에 의해서도 변화될 수 있음을 주사전자현미경, 밀도, 열전도도. 삭마표면등을 통해 설명했다. 3가지의 직조형태중, 3K8HS 직조구조가 3K twill구조나 12K8HS구조보다 우수한 내삭마성을 보임을 설명했다.