Carbon Fibers: Carbonization with Misfusion: Fundamental Limits of Carbon‐Fiber Strength Revisited (Adv. Mater. 46/2016)

On page 10317, B. I. Yakobson and co-workers discuss “D-loops”, which are new types of defect that form during the carbonization stages of polyacrylonitrile precursors. If the process is viewed as zipping together several polymeric nanoribbons, then faulty zipping can result in the formation of D-loops. These defects can account for the large discrepancy between the theoretical strength of graphene and the measured experimental strength of carbon fibers.