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Engineering microstructure toward split-free mesophase pitch-based carbon fibers

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Abstract

High alignment of graphene in mesophase pitch-based carbon fibers endows them with excellent properties such as high thermal conductivity and ultrahigh modulus. However, the weak interlayer interaction between large planar molecules leads to unwanted open crack in circular carbon fiber, leading to low strain-to-failure and low utilization rate in composite manufacturing. It remains a challenge to produce split-free circular carbon fiber while keeping a high degree of alignment of graphite layers. Herein, a die swell manipulating strategy is employed to address the problem through elaborating spinneret design. By applying an exit angle of 30° at the spinneret, the stored stress and shear-induced orientation of crystallites during the capillary flow were relaxed at the exit to enhance the die swell. The disoriented texture of fibers prevents the carbon fibers from splitting while still maintaining high degree of molecular alignment. The obtained carbon fibers present 20% higher of tensile strength, and more than twice of the compressive strength than the split ones, without sacrificing their superior thermal properties, which is up to 512 W·m−1·K−1. The work provides valuable insights into the design of carbon fiber for structural and functional integration materials in aerospace and beyond.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No.: 531118010508), Special Fund for Innovative Construction Province of Hunan (Grant No.: 2019RS2058, 2020RC3075, 2020GK4029), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No.: 2020M672480), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.: 52002104), the independent research projects for State Key Laboratory of Advanced Design and Manufacturing for vehicle body (Grant No.: 62065001), and the Science and Technology Planning Project of Changsha (Grant No.: kh2003018).

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  1. Huang Wu and Dong Huang contributed equally to the work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Materials Science and Engineering, Hunan Province Key Laboratory for Advanced Carbon Materials and Applied Technology, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, People’s Republic of China

    Huang Wu, Dong Huang, Chong Ye, Ting Ouyang, Gaoming Ye, Xiao Wu, Kui Shi, Fei Han, Hongbo Liu & Jinshui Liu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Advanced Design and Manufacturing for Vehicle Body, Hunan University, Changsha, 410082, People’s Republic of China

    Chong Ye & Jinshui Liu

  3. Hunan Province Engineering Research Center for High Performance Pitch-Based Carbon Materials, Hunan Toyi Carbon Material Technology Co., Ltd, Changsha, 410000, People’s Republic of China

    Dong Huang, Chong Ye & Jinshui Liu

  4. Key Laboratory of Advanced Functional Composite Materials, Aerospace Research Institute of Materials and Processing Technology, Beijing, 100076, People’s Republic of China

    Shipeng Zhu & Zhen Fan

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  1. Huang Wu
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Correspondence to Chong Ye, Shipeng Zhu or Jinshui Liu.

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Wu, H., Huang, D., Ye, C. et al. Engineering microstructure toward split-free mesophase pitch-based carbon fibers. J Mater Sci 57, 2411–2423 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-021-06770-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-021-06770-9

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