Effect of Post Spinning Modification on the PAN Precursors and Resulting Carbon Fibres

The impregnation of a special grade polyacrylonitrile(PAN) precursor fibres was carried out in a 8 wt.% KMnO4 aqueous solution to obtain modified PAN precusor fibres.The focus is primarily on the effects of modification on the structure and the pbysical properties of precursor fibres,thermal stabilised and their resulting carbon fibres,which were characterized by the combination use of densities,wide-angle X-ray diffraction(WAXD),X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS),Elemental analysis(EA),Fourier transform infrared(FT-IR) and seaming electron microscope(SEM),etc.KMnO4 as a strong oxidizer can swell,oxidize and corrode the skin of a precursor ibre,transform partly C≡N groups to C=N ones,decrease the crystal size,increase the orientation index,increase the crystallinity irdex,furthemore ircrease the densities of modified PAN precursors and resulting thermal stabilised fibres.As a result,the carbon fibres dcveloped from modified PAN fibres show,an improvment in tensile strength of 31.25% and an improvement in elongation of 77.78%,but a decrease of 16.52% in Young's modulus.