Fabrication of ultra thin and aligned carbon nanofibres from electrospun polyacrylonitrile nanofibres

Ultra thin and aligned carbon nanofibres (CNFs) have been fabricated by heat treatment from aligned polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibre precursors prepared by electrospinning. The alignment of the precursor nanofibres was achieved by using a modified electrospinning set up developed recently, where a tip collector was used to collect and align the nanofibres. The average diameter of the aligned CNFs is about 80 nm. The stabilization and carbonization behaviour were studied mainly based on the randomly oriented PAN nanofibres. The effects of stabilization and carbonization temperatures, temperature-increasing rates, and with and without substrates on the morphology and structure of the CNFs were investigated. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy were used to characterize the structure of the CNFs and thermogravimetric/differential temperature analysis was used to evaluate the thermal behaviour of PAN nanofibres.