Development of pitch-based carbon fibers: a review

Carbon fibers with high performance are critically important materials for various industries, especially pitch-based carbon fibers including isotropic pitch-based and mesophase pitch-based are applied widely in the fields of aerospace, defense, sports, electronics, environmental protection, etc. Therefore, their development and fabrication have been a research focus in recent years. Carbon fiber production is a complicated process including raw material pretreatment, pitch preparation, melt-spinning, stabilization, carbonization, and graphitization. Each step has a significant influence on the properties and performance of the final carbon fiber product, and thus should be controlled effectively for preparing carbon fiber with desirable performance. This review presents a systematic and critical review of the preparation mechanism, influence factors, operational conditions, and various properties of the carbon fiber product, which was clarified along the master line of the step-by-step preparation of pitch-based carbon fibers. Besides, the current issues of carbon fiber production and its potential industrialization, which is the main challenge for the broad application of pitch-based carbon fibers, are also discussed in detail in this review.