Carbonization Temperature Dependent Electrical Properties of Carbon Nanofibers - from Nanoscale to Macroscale.

An exact understanding of the conductivity of individual fibers and their networks is crucial to tailor the overall macroscopic properties of polyacrylonitril (PAN) based carbon nanofibers (CNFs). Therefore, microelectrical properties of CNF networks and nanoelectrical properties of individual CNFs, carbonized at temperatures from 600°C to 1000°C, are studied by means of conductive atomic force microscopy (C-AFM). At the microscale, the CNF networks show good electrical interconnections enabling a homogeneously distributed current flow. The network's homogeneity is underlined by the strong correlation of macroscopic conductivities, determined by the four-point-method, and microscopic results. Both, microscopic and macroscopic electrical properties, solely depend on the carbonization temperature and the exact resulting fiber structure. Strikingly, nanoscale high resolution current maps of individual CNFs reveal a large high-resistive surface fraction, representing a clear limitation. High-resistive surface domains are either attributed to disordered high-resistive carbon structures at the surface or the absence of electron percolation paths in the bulk volume. With increased carbonization temperature, the conductive surface domains grow in size resulting in a higher conductivity. This work contributes to existing microstructural models of CNFs by extending them by electrical properties, especially electron percolation paths. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.