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Glass-like carbon precursors shrink significantly during curing and carbonization, which leads to crack formation and bending. Cured furan resin powder and ethanol were added to furan resin to diminish the weight loss, to suppress the shrinkage and bending, and to readily release the gases evolved during polymerization and curing. Curing and carbonization were controlled by pressure and slow heating to avoid damage to the samples. The effect of the filler and ethanol on the fabrication process was examined by measuring the properties of the glass-like carbon, such as the specific gravity, bending strength, electrical resistivity, and microstructural change. The specific gravities of the filler-added glass-like carbons were higher than those of the ethanol-added samples because of the formation of macropores from the vaporization of ethanol during the curing and polymerization processes. Although the ethanol-added glass-like carbons exhibited lower bending strengths after carbonization than did the filler-added samples, the opposite result was observed after aging at 2,600 o C. We found that the macropores created from ethanol were contracted and removed upon heat treatment. The electrical resistivity of the glass-like carbon aged at 2,600 o C was lower than those of the samples carbonized at 1,000 o C. We attribute this phenomenon to the fact that aging at high temperature led to well-developed microstructures, the removal of macropores, and the reduction of the surface area.

Activated carbon fibers were prepared from stabilized PAN-based fibers by chemical activation using hydroxides at different concentrations. The experimental data showed variations in specific surface area, microstructure, pore size distribution, and amounts of iodine adsorbed by the activated carbon fibers. Specific surface area of about 2244m2/g and iodine adsorption of 1202mg/g were obtained in the KOH 1.5M. However, the use of NaOH in the activation process rather than KOH and using the same time/ temperature profiles resulted in a carbon with a much lower surface area. KOH is a more developed pore structure than NaOH, which means that KOH is a better activation agent in producing ACF than NaOH.

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