ИСТИНА

Porous graphitised carbon monoliths embedded with nanodiamonds (CMND) are presented in this work. Nanodiamond (ND) (sp3 carbon) has a variety of favourable properties including an interesting and tuneable surface chemistry, mechanical and thermal stability, and conductivity. CMND was prepared using a hard templating method. Bare 5 mu;m silica particles and detonation nanodiamonds (5-15 nm diameter) were added to the co-polymerisation mixture containing a resorcinol/iron(III) complex. Polymerisation of this mixture was followed by carbonisation at either 900 or 1250 °C under nitrogen. Removal of the silica template and catalyst was achieved by hydrofluoric acid etching. A blank carbon monolith (CM blank) was also prepared using bare silica templates for comparative purposes [1]. BET surface area measurements showed CMND to have a higher specific surface area than CM blank (400 m2/g and 349 m2/g respectively, with carbonisation at 900 °C). HRTEM and FESEM characterisation of CMND revealed a variety of interesting carbon nanostructures to be present in the monolith following carbonisation at 1250 °C. Apparent onion-like carbon (OLC), carbon nano-rods up to several mu;m in length and graphene sheets were observed. OLC clusters can be produced by a temperature-induced transformation of ND. The temperature of carbonisation was critical in the formation of these carbon nano-structures, as were the localised heating effects resulting from the thermal conductivity of ND. Carbon nano-structures have high surface areas and a high sorption capacity making them suitable for a variety of prospective applications. Porous graphitic carbons are also receiving significant research interest due to their high surface areas and bimodal pore structure which make them ideal for use in a variety of applications including energy storage, as electrode materials or as adsorbents in solid phase extraction.