Abstract
THE microstructure of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) based carbon fibres has been investigated by several techniques including high and low angle X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. The results obtained with high-modulus (400 GNm−2) RAE carbon fibres1,2 and high-modulus Rolls-Royce carbon fibres3 are essentially similar; crystallites, the widths of which have a distribution of values with a mean about 65 A, enclose sharp-edged microvoids of mean width about 10 A. There is little three-dimensional order in the crystallites and the graphite layer planes are essentially turbostratic. The length of the crystallite seems to be limited by lattice defects to less than 100 A although individual layers may well be much longer. Studies of rayon-based carbon fibres4 have yielded similar evidence and recently Fourdeux, Herinckx, Perret and Ruland5 reported that the layer planes in these materials can be resolved directly by high-resolution electron microscopy following the phase-contrast method described by Heidenreich, Hess and Ban6 for carbon black specimens.
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