Carbon fiber and method of manufacturing same

Abstract

A carbon fiber includes single fibers having lengths of 10 cm or less, a fiber axis of each single fiber having an undulation width of 2.5 μm or more when a part thereof between two points with a straight-line distance of 1 mm is observed from a lateral direction, and a coefficient of variation in the undulation width being 100% or less. A method of producing carbon fiber production includes performing stabilization treatment of a precursor fiber bundle for polyacrylonitrile based carbon fiber, performing pre-carbonization treatment, and performing carbonization treatment in this order, followed by cutting the resulting carbon fiber bundle in the form of continuous fiber to a single fiber length of 10 cm or less, the twist count of the fiber bundle during the carbonization treatment step being 16 turns/m or more.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.