Fabrication of zirconium carbide nanofibers by electrospinning

In this work, we present an easy approach to prepare zirconium carbide (ZrC) nanofibers by electrospinning technique. Polyzirconoxane (PZO) is used as the zirconium source. Polyacrylonitrile (PAN) is used as the spinning aid and primary carbon source while sucrose is used as the additional carbon source. The as-spun green fibers are converted to ZrC nanofibers after carbothermal reduction at 1400 °C. Core–shell structured nanofibers are obtained when using PAN only as the carbon source, while more homogeneous nanofibers which are composed of uniformly nano-sized ZrC crystals are obtained when using PAN and sucrose as the carbon source. The carbon source has a strong influence on the fiber morphology by affecting the kinetics of the carbothermal reduction reaction. The obtained ZrC fibers are characterized by XRD, SEM and TEM.