HISTORY OF NANO FIBERS

One of the first technical records concerning carbon nanofibers is probably a patent dated 1889 on synthesis of filamentous carbon by Hughes and Chambers. They utilized a methane/hydrogen gaseous mixture and grew carbon filaments through gas pyrolysis and subsequent carbon deposition and filament growth. The true appreciation of these fibers, however, came much later when their structure could be analyzed by electron microscope.The first electron microscopy observations of carbon nanofibers were performed in the early 1950s by the Soviet scientists Radushkevich and Lukyanovich, who published a paper in the Soviet Journal of Physical Chemistry showing hollow graphitic carbon fibers that are 50 nanometers in diameter. Early in the 1970s, Japanese researchers Koyama and Endo succeeded in the manufacturing of VGCF with a diameter of 1 µm and length of above 1 mm. Later, in the early 1980s, Tibbetts in the USA and Benissad  in France continued to perfect the VGCF fabrication process. In the USA, the deeper studies focusing on synthesis and properties of these materials for advanced applications were led by R. Terry K. Baker  and were motivated by the need to inhibit the growth of carbon nanofibers because of the persistent problems caused by accumulation of the material in a variety of commercial processes especially in the particular field of petroleum processing. The first commercialization of VGCF was attempted by the Japanese company Nikosso in 1991 under the trade name Grasker® , the same year Ijima published his famous paper introducing the discovery of Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) to the world [Ijima 1991]. VGCNF is produced through essentially the same manufacturing process as VGCF, only the diameter is typically less than 200 nm. Several companies around the globe are actively involved in the commercial scale production of carbon nanofibers and new engineering applications are being developed for these materials intensively, the latest being a carbon nanofiber bearing porous composite for oil spill remediation.