DOE Hydrogen Sorption Center of Excellence: Synthesis and Processing of Single-Walled Carbon Nanohorns for Hydrogen Storage and Catalyst Supports

摘要

The objective of the project was to exploit the unique morphology, tunable porosity and excellent metal supportability of single-walled carbon nanohorns (SWNHs) to optimize hydrogen uptake and binding energy through an understanding of metal-carbon interactions and nanoscale confinement. SWNHs provided a unique material to understand these effects because they are carbon nanomaterials which are synthesized from the 'bottom-up' with well-defined, sub-nm pores and consist of single-layer graphene, rolled up into closed, conical, horn-shaped units which form ball-shaped aggregates of (approx)100-nm diameter. SWNHs were synthesized without metal catalysts by the high-temperature vaporization of solid carbon, so they can be used to explore metal-free hydrogen storage. However, SWNHs can also be decorated with metal nanoparticles or coatings in post-processing treatments to understand how metals augment hydrogen storage. The project first explored how the synthesis and processing of SWNHs could be modified to tailor pore sizes to optimal size ranges. Nanohorns were rapidly synthesized at 20g/hr rates by high-power laser vaporization enabling studies such as neutron scattering with gram quantities. Diagnostics of the synthesis process including high-speed videography, fast pyrometry of the graphite target, and differential mobility analysis monitoring of particle size distributions were applied in this project to provide in situ process control of SWNH morphology, and to understand the conditions for different pore sizes. We conclude that the high-temperature carbon-vaporization process to synthesize SWNHs is scalable, and can be performed by electric arc or other similar techniques as economically as carbon can be vaporized.