Structures and physical properties of carbon fibers from coal tar mesophase pitch

Carbon fibers having various types of structures were prepared by spinning coal tar mesophase pitch, followed by thermosetting and heat treatment at high temperature. Two kinds of spinning—spinning with stirring the pitch above a capillary and without stirring—have been tried to form pitch fibers from coal tar mesophase pitch. Carbon fibers obtained from mesophase pitch and spun without stirring have a radial transverse structure where the graphite layers are arranged radially in the transverse cross section of the fibers. Carbon fibers made with a stirring system can have random, onion, and a novel “quasionion structure” by changing the spinning conditions. Carbon fibers spun with stirring are less graphitizable than those spun without stirring. No separation of the ten diffraction bands into 100 and 101 peaks and no appearance of a 112 peak were observed by x-ray diffraction when the fibers were heat treated at 2700°C, whereas carbon fibers spun without stirring show clear evidence of graphitization by heat treatment at 2700°C. Transverse magnetoresistance effects at 77 K, (Δρ/ρ)_t have been measured to characterize the structure of the carbon fibers. The carbon fibers spun with stirring and heat treated at 2500°C generally exhibit a negative transverse magnetoresistance effect, whereas the carbon fibers spun without stirring exhibit a positive magnetoresistance. Good correlations are found among d₀₀₂, L_c (002), transverse magnetoresistance, and resistivity at room temperature of carbon fibers spun under various conditions and heat treated at 2500°C. The tensile strengths (TS) of carbon fibers that are less graphitized are higher than those of carbon fibers with a higher degree of graphitization if tensile moduli (TM) are almost constant.