Structural Analysis of Pan Fiber by X-ray Diffraction

Polyacrylonitryle (PAN) fibers are used on a large scale in textile industry but, some sorts of PAN fibers are valuable precursors for specific carbon fiber (CF) due to their best fitness to the purpose e.g. for high strength CF or for active CF. The application of PAN as precursors of CF is based on its specific structure and texture. Thus, the properties of PAN base CF strongly depend on PAN structure, texture and fiber morphology. In this respect, the paper addresses the modeling of PAN fiber structure and texture and, subsequently, estimation of structure and texture parameters based mainly on Wide Angle X-ray Diffraction (WAXD) technique and other data. The PAN fiber structure and texture parameters were calculated on the basis of classical X-ray diffraction theory applied to paracrystals. The preferred orientation parameters were calculated on a wide accepted model.