[Raman spectra of PAN-based carbon fibers during surface treatment]

Laser Raman spectroscopy was employed to characterize the microstructure changes of PAN based carbon fibers among different surface treatments, and the characteristics of first-order Raman spectra of carbon fibers during surface treatment were investigated in the present paper. The results show that the variety of carbon fibers' phase structures can be represented by Raman spectroscopy parameters, such as the Raman frequency shifts of main D and G bands, FWHMs and additive bands' area ratios at the positions of different Raman frequency shifts. During different surface treatment, some changes in the first-order Raman spectroscopy parameters of PAN based carbon fibers were observed, the Raman frequency shifts of D and G bands moved toward higher wavenumber, and the values of R(I(D)/I(G)) also improved, which can be used to measure the graphite crystallite size of carbon fiber. It is suggested that the graphite microstructure of carbon fibers is decomposed during surface treatment, the crystallite size is reduced, and the activity of the graphite crystallite boundary is improved. Moreover, the full-widths at half maximum (FWHM) of D and G bands both decrease, which can give information on the order of graphite microstructure and the quantity of defects in carbon fibers, and the relative bands' areas of A and D" bands also decrease, which can be attributed to the structure of amorphous carbon or some kinds of organic functional groups in carbon fibers. These differences among the spectra demonstrate that the structure of amorphous carbon in carbon fibers is easier to oxidize or decompose than multilayer graphite structure, so the relative proportion of amorphous carbon decreases during surface treatment. The conclusions obtained by Raman spectra are basically in agreement with the improvement of apparent crystallization degrees of carbon fibers during surface treatment, which were calculated by X-ray diffraction method. So the variety rules of carbon fibers' phase structures can be investigated by laser Raman spectroscopy.