저가형 탄소섬유 개발을 위한 자외선 조사 기반 의류용 PAN 섬유의 연속식 안정화 공정 개발

Abstract

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.