Automotive carbon fiber: Opportunities and challenges

The carbon fiber industry is growing, with steadily increasing demand from the aerospace and defense markets as well as smaller markets such as sporting goods and construction materials. Infiltration of the automotive market remains a challenge, however and so the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) FreedomCAR program has made the development of low-cost automotive-grade carbon fiber its highest priority for materials research. The DOE effort is currently focused on three objectives: developing low-cost carbonfiber precursors, low-cost conversion methods, and high-throughput fabrication processes.