4 c produced as described in example 4 from the carbon black depicted in fig4 fig6 is a tem depicting the carbon nanofiber precursor as used in experiments 1 4 this material has a nitrogen surface area of 68 m 2 g and an average fiber diameter of 70 nm fig7 is a tem of molybdenum carbide fibers produced as described in example 3 from the carbon nanofiber depicted in fig6 note the presence of mo 2 c crystallites adhered to the fiber surface fig8 depicts a tem of sic fibers produced as described in example 1 from the carbon nanofiber depicted in fig6 stem edax analysis showed no residual oxygen to be present in this product indicating complete conversion to the carbide fig9 is a tem of tic fibers produced as described in example 2 from the carbon nanofiber depicted in fig6 stem edax analysis showed no residual oxygen to be present in this product indicating complete conversion to the carbide turning now to table 1 entitled u201c identification of major and minor phases of xrd spectra u201d xrd analysis was also carried out on the samples from experiments 1 4 the three samples a 31077 a 31078 and a 31079 were different metal carbides derived from carbon black cdx975 a027276 while samples a 31080 a 31081 and a 31082 were similar metal carbides derived from carbon nanofibers sample a 30887 xrd spectra from the metal carbides derived from cb are shown in fig1 while the spectra from those derived from fibers are shown in fig1 matching of peaks reveals no difference in the carbide phases produced from the two starting materials a listing of major and minor component peaks in the xrd spectra is given in table 1 these results demonstrate the.