The effect of electrochemical surface treatments of carbon fibers using scanning tunneling microscopy

Scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) has been applied to the study of the topography of polyacrylonitrile (PAN)-based carbon fibers before and after electrochemical surface treatments. The results show that the electrical anodic oxidation only changes the surface aspects; at nanometric resolution; the nanostructure and nanotexture such as the step-like crystallite stacking are decreased with increasing electric current densities.