Well-Defined Carbon Nanoparticles Prepared from Water-Soluble Shell Cross-linked Micelles that Contain Polyacrylonitrile Cores

摘要

Carbon-based materials have traditionally played an important role in modern technologies, ranging from the manufacture of everyday-use products such as automobile tires (carbon fillers), through reinforcements in composites (carbon fibers), electrode materials for a variety of processes, to activated carbons widely used in separation techniques, to name just a few. In addition to those commodity materials, in recent decades there has been a dynamic growth in the area of advanced engineering carbon materials. Seminal events in this area include the development of synthetic diamond and highly oriented pyrolytic graphite in 1960. In the last two decades, this field has been particularly reenergized by the discovery of fullerenes in 1985 and carbon nanotubes in 1991.[4] In addition to generating tremendous fundamental interest, these nanostructured forms of carbon have found, or are expected to find, numerous applications such as advanced fillers, materials for energy and gas storage, templates, nanoprobes and sensors, and elements for molecular electronics devices. Two main groups of strategies for the preparation of engineering carbon materials include: 1) pyrolysis of organic precursors (mostly polymeric) under inert atmosphere to yield large-scale engineering carbon materials and 2) physical/chemical vapor deposition techniques to produce well-defined nanostructured forms of carbon. Whereas techniques from the first group are applicable to large-scale production, they offer very limited control of the carbon (nano)structure. Techniques from the second group, while allowing for atomic-scale precision in nanostructure control, are relatively expensive, have limited yield, and require complex equipment.