Starting from the 1860s
When British chemist and physicist Sir Joseph Wilson Swan used carbon fiber as a light source to make semi-vacuum electric lamps, it took nearly a hundred years for carbon fiber to truly enter the stage of commercial application and high-performance fiber until the invention of polyacrylonitrile fiber with excellent mechanical properties and elastic modulus. So far, polyacrylonitrile-based carbon fiber still occupies 90% of the carbon fiber market. Since the invention of polyacrylonitrile fiber, after many researchers, companies, and enterprises have continuously studied carbon fiber and improved its performance.
In the 1950s
To develop large rockets and artificial satellites and comprehensively improve aircraft performance, the United States urgently needed new structural materials and ablation-resistant materials, which made carbon fiber reappear on the stage of materials science. In 1950, the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in the United States began to develop viscose-based carbon fiber. In 1959, the UCC company in the United States produced low-modulus viscose-based carbon fiber "Thornel-25" for ablation-resistant and thermal insulation materials. Due to the large number of applications in aerospace and military and the continuous improvement of performance, viscose-based carbon fiber has been in its heyday for some time.
From the 1980s to the 1990s
Carbon fiber developed rapidly under the leadership of the civil aviation field
in the 21st century
The carbon fiber production process technology has matured. With the expansion of carbon fiber application fields, the market demand for carbon fiber has increased sharply, and the carbon fiber industry has become increasingly mature.
In March 2014
Toray announced the successful development of T1100G carbon fiber. Toray uses traditional PAN solution spinning technology to finely control the carbonization process, improve the microstructure of carbon fiber at the nanoscale, and control the orientation, crystallite size, and defects of graphite in the carbonized fiber, so that the strength and elastic modulus are greatly improved. The tensile strength of T1100G is 6.6GPa, which is 12% higher than T800 (in the latest manual of Toray's official website in Japan, the strength of T1100G has been revised to 7.0GPa); the elastic modulus is 324GPa, which is 10% higher, and it is entering the industrialization stage.
