Historical Development of Nanocarbons and Carbon Nanotubes

Concurrent stream of the development of nanomaterials for solid-state hydrogen storage comes from century-old studies of porous materials for absorption of gasses, among them porous carbon phases, better known as activated carbon. Absorption of gases in those materials follows different principles from just discussed absorption in metals. Instead of chemisorption of gas into the crystalline structure of metals, it undergoes physisorption on crystalline surfaces and in the porous structure formed by crystals. The gases have also been known to be phy-sisorbed on fine carbon fibers. 

Carbon nanotubes, as graphene and graphite, are highly ordered carbon phases. However, a separate line can be drawn for historical development of disordered carbon phases among them is an amorphous carbon (am-C). In it, strong bonding between carbons did not allow for completely chaotic distribution of carbon atoms in solid-state phase. Instead, amorphous carbon exhibits random distribution of three possible coordinations of carbon atoms in a planar sp, tetrahedral sp and 

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