Atomic‐Scale Mechanisms in Microwave‐Enhanced Iron‐Catalyzed Graphitization of Amorphous/Microcrystalline Carbon

Abstract Graphite‐based materials hold significant applications in metallurgy, electronics, nuclear engineering, and new energy technologies, where catalytic graphitization offers a critical route for synthesizing high‐purity artificial graphite. This study revealed the atomic‐scale mechanisms of iron‐catalyzed graphitization through experiment and molecular dynamics simulations: molten iron serves as a carbon transport medium via a dissolution‐supersaturation‐precipitation process, enabling continuous growth of micrometer‐scale graphite through primary graphite crystallization. The microwave‐assisted catalytic approach not only achieves a high graphitization degree of 95.12% at 1300 °C, compared to only 87.67% with conventional heating, but also significantly lowers the graphitization initiation temperature to 800 °C. The universality of this method is further demonstrated by its application to carbon fibers, yielding surface graphitization degrees exceeding 93%. This work provides a new technical approach and method for the efficient graphitization transformation of amorphous/microcrystalline carbon materials with broad implications for industrial applications.