Stabilization of acrylic fibers by sulfur atoms mechanism of stabilization

✍ Scribed by Ken-ichi Morita; Hiroshi Miyachi; Tohru Hiramatsu

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1981
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 597 KB
• Volume: 19
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0008-6223
• DOI: 10.1016/0008-6223(81)90099-3

✦ Synopsis

The conventional process for making carbon fibers from PAN fibers includes a preliminary step of oxidizing the fibers in order to stabilize the polymer prior to pyrolysis where oxygen atoms are incorporated into the polymer. We have found that the introduction of sulfur atoms can also stabilize the PAN fibers. It was concluded that the essential step of the stabilization of acrylic fibers is the formation of active sites by the incorporation of hetero atoms into the polymer to initiate polymerization of nitrile groups to form the condensed heterocylic ring structure. The kinetics of stabilization reaction were studied and it was found that stabilization is a first order reaction with activation energy of 30 kcal . mol-'. The chemistry and the mechanism of the stabilization is proposed.

12 KEN-ICHI MORITA et a/.