A Review of High-Performance Carbon Nanotube-Based Carbon Fibers

Abstract With the growing importnace of high-performance carbon fibers (CFs), researches have been conducted in many applications such as aerospace, automobile and battery. Commercilalized carbon fibers have been manufactured with thermal treatment of organic precursor fibers including polyacrylonitrile (PAN), pitch and cellulose. Since conventional carbon fibers display either high tensile strength or high modulus properties due to structural limitations, it has been a chalenge to develop carbon fibers with both tensile strength and modulus. Therefore, various studies have been conducted to obtain high-performance carbon fiber. Among them, 1-dimensional carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been used the most commonly because of high mechanical and conducting properties. In this review, the recent development of carbon nanotube fibers and carbon nanotube-based composite carbon fibers is introduced. The those fibers showed both high strength and high modulus with high conducting properties.