Carbon nanospheres: synthesis, physicochemical properties and applications

The discovery of carbon nanostructures, essentially carbon nanotubes (CNT) and carbon nanofibres (CNF) has led to a big effort devoted to their synthesis, characterization, surface modification and use. Indeed, these structures have encountered application in a wide range of technological fields, su...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of materials chemistry 2011-01, Vol.21 (6), p.1664-1672
Main Authors: Nieto-Márquez, Antonio, Romero, Rubí, Romero, Amaya, Valverde, José Luis
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Carbon
Curvature
Flakes
Fullerenes
Nanocomposites
Nanomaterials
Nanostructure
Surface chemistry
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Summary:The discovery of carbon nanostructures, essentially carbon nanotubes (CNT) and carbon nanofibres (CNF) has led to a big effort devoted to their synthesis, characterization, surface modification and use. Indeed, these structures have encountered application in a wide range of technological fields, such as adsorption, catalysis, hydrogen storage or electronics. Apart from the filamentous arrange of graphene sheets conducting to CNT or CNF, carbon can bond in other different ways to create structures with dissimilar properties. The pairing of pentagonal and heptagonal carbon rings can result in the formation of carbon nanospheres (CNS). This novel nanostructure has only now started to attract significant research activity. In its spherical arrangement, the graphite sheets are not closed shells but rather waving flakes that follow the curvature of the sphere, creating many open edges at the surface. Contrary to the chemically inert C 60 , the unclosed graphitic flakes provide reactive "dangling bonds" that are proposed to enhance surface reactions, establishing CNS as good candidates for catalytic and adsorption applications. Despite the embryonic stage of the field and the existing data being too scattered, this work is aimed to provide a comprehensive review of the existing literature related to CNS, exploring the different preparation routes employed, the critical characterization results as well as the applications studied so far. This work reviews the synthesis techniques, critical characterization aspects and application of carbon nanospheres, as a novel and promising carbon nanostructure.
ISSN:0959-9428
1364-5501
DOI:10.1039/c0jm01350a