Patent ID: 8337730

Claim:
A method of forming a continuous, multicellular, hollow carbon fiber comprising: (a) providing a resin mixture comprising a first polymer component comprising a polymer selected from the group consisting of polyacrylonitrile (PAN), pitch, polyphenylene sulfide and combinations thereof, (b) providing a second polymer component comprising a fugitive polymer which is dissociable from the first polymer component; (c) separately extruding the resin mixture and the fugitive polymer and feeding both the resin mixture and the fugitive polymer into a spin-pack assembly capable of producing multi-component fibers comprising nanoscale dimensions in an islands-in-a-sea configuration such that the second polymer component comprises a plurality of islands and the first polymer component comprises the sea; (d) extracting the fugitive polymer from the multi-component fibers to form continuous, multicellular, hollow fibers comprising said first polymer component; (e) oxidizing the fibers by sufficiently heating the fibers; and (f) subjecting the fibers to carbonization comprising the heating of the oxidized fibers to a temperature ranging from about 600 to about 3000° C.