Quantitative X-ray and Spectroscopic Analysis of Nanocrystalline and Amorphous Carbon Materials

Quantitative X-ray and Spectroscopic Analysis of Nanocrystalline and Amorphous Carbon Materials

Carbon and its various allotropic forms is a blooming and extensively investigated field for the past few decades. The revolution which started with the discovery of fullerenes in 1985 continues with the newly discovered wonder material graphene and has never failed to amass the interest of scientific community. After all these years it still stays as a hot topic of research. This is primarily due to their unique physical and chemical properties which makes them suitable for a whole host of applications ranging from thin film technology to nano-medicine. But, the production cost of these novel materials is an issue which shadows its glory and hence it is essential to find out efficient and cost effective sources and production methods for these materials. Graphene oxide has attracted much interest because of its low cost, easy access and unique ability to get converted into graphene. Graphene oxide is basically, a graphene sheet which consists of either carboxyl or hydroxyl groups. Foreseeing the upcoming era of carbon nanomaterials on account of their revolutionary applications and the ever increasing demand for economical and viable sources, we have identified and explored the structural parameters of an efficient and cost effective precursor of the same. In the present investigation, wood charcoal and coconut shell charcoal, which is a superior source of activated carbon, is produced by a slow thermal decomposition method in a limited supply of oxygen. It is an impure form of carbon- is a black residue composed mainly of carbon, ash and char. Wood charcoal is transformed into Graphite oxide (GO) by a modified Hummers method. Spectroscopic analysis of the samples is carried out by various techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman Spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), UV-Vis spectroscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The various structural parameters are calculated from XRD and Raman data.

John Jerin

Department of Physics