FRACTIONATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF PYRENE PITCH OLIGOMERS: UNDERSTANDING THE BUILDING BLOCKS FOR CARBON MATERIALS

摘要

Carbonaceous pitches can be used as precursors for a variety of high-performance carbon materials, including cathodes for lithium ion batteries, high thermal conductivity carbon fibers, and carbon-based composites. These pitches can be produced from various resources, such as coal tar, aromatic decant oil [1], and pure polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) using either thermal [2] or catalytic polymerization [3] processes. Thies and co-workers [4] have developed a method for fractionating thermally polymerized, petroleumbased pitches into narrow molecular weight (mol wt) cuts via dense-gas (also called supercritical) extraction (DGE or SCE). DGE can in principle be applied to all types of pitches, regardless of their method of production. Fractionating pitches in order to isolate the individual oligomers for study is a useful technique for helping us develop a better understanding of the molecular structure-bulk property relationships of pitches and their consituents.