A method to observe the structure of the interface between mesocarbon microbeads and pitch

It is known that mesocarbon microbeads (MCMBs) have ordered structure and grow after absorbing molecules from pitch. However, the structure of pitch used for preparing MCMBs is disordered. Thus question of whether there is a region where the molecules absorbed from pitch change their orientations is a very interesting problem. In this paper, an interface between MCMBs and their pitch matrix has been found and the structure of the interface was observed by scanning electron microcopy. There are some ordered regions in the interface but the number of ordered regions in the interface is much fewer than the number inside the MCMBs. This indicates that the interface between the MCMBs and the pitch is the region where the orientations of the molecules absorbed from pitch change.