Precursors, Structure and Properties of Carbon Fibers

Carbon fibers are one of the most important engineering materials in the current high-tech field. Thus precursors, structure and properties of carbon fibers are necessarily summarized to understand their fundamental principle. Carbonaceous precursors play a decisive role to fabricate advanced carbon fibers. The basic structure of carbon fibers is mostly inherited from the parent precursors and mainly dominates fibers’ physical properties (e.g., strength and modulus), which decide the practical applications. Thereby the morphology, microstructure, crystallite orientation and structure models of various carbon fibers are mainly reviewed. Meanwhile, the size change, new emerging forms and porous functions of carbon fibers and their necessary surface modification are introduced. Finally, the outlook of carbon fibers is briefly presented.