Rapid In Situ Polymerization of Polyacrylonitrile/Graphene Oxide Nanocomposites as Precursors for High-Strength Carbon Nanofibers

• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.1c02643
• Publication Date: 2021-03-31T03:28:53Z
• Authors: Ye Zhang; Bo Zhu; Xun Cai; Xiaomin Yuan; Shengyao Zhao; Junwei Yu; Kun Qiao; Rongman Qin
• Keywords: Polyacrylonitrile; In situ polymerization; Electrospinning

Graphene oxide (GO) has been widely used as an additive of polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-based carbon nanofibers (CNFs) to optimize its crystal structure and improve the mechanical performances nanofibers. However, homogeneous dispersion GO nanosheets among entangled PAN molecular chains is always challenging, poor severely limits positive effects on both CNFs. Considering this issue, paper provides for first time effective solution achieve rapid uniform introduction in PAN-based via situ polymerization, optimization nanofiber by systematically studied three consecutive stages (polymerization, electrospinning, carbonization) production process. During tightly attached form PAN/GO nanocomposites, interaction maintained throughout spinning Not only arrangement but also size final turbostratic CNFs considerably improved between GO. Besides, direct proof that promote crystallization orientation matrix presented. As a result, tensile strength remarkably increased 2.45 times with 0.5 wt % addition In summary, method efficiently introducing nanoscale additives into gives insights high-performance