Introduction to Carbon Materials

Carbon is one of the most important elements in nature and the one most closely related to human beings. Carbon possesses various electronic orbital characteristics such as sp, sp and sp hybridized orbitals. In particular, the anisotropy of sp leads to the anisotropy of crystalline and other diverse arrangements. Therefore, various carbon-based materials have been found and artificially created. In fact, carbon is the only single element that can be 

Reproduced from ref. 38 with permission from The Royal Society of Chemistry. 

Scientists have gradually found that carbon materials exhibit superior properties to any other materials in many aspects such as hardness, optical properties, temperature resistance, radiation resistance, resistance to chemical medicines, electrical insulation, electrical conductivity, and surface and interface properties. Carbon materials contain nearly all of the features of all materials on the earth, from the hardest to the softest, insulation to good thermal conductivity, and total absorption of light to being totally permeable to light. 

Carbon nanotubes are seamless and hollow nanotubes that are curled from a single layer or multi-layer graphite flakes. Carbon nanotubes have many advantages such as high elasticity, low density, good insulation and 

Graphene is a carbon material composed of carbon atoms in a single chip and is the thinnest and hardest nanomaterial on earth. The basic structural units of graphene are the most stable possible, benzene rings, and they form the current ideal of a two-dimensional nanomaterial.Graphene exhibits low resistivity and the most rapid electron transfer speed available. Therefore, it is expected to be utilized for the development of a new generation of thinner, more conductive electronic components or transistors.  

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Shiraishi, M. Introduction to Carbon Materials, Tokyo, Japan Carbon Society of Japan, 1984 29. 

Marsh, H. (1997). Carbon materials an overview of carbon artifacts. In Introduction to Carbon Technologies (H. Marsh, E.A. Heintz, and F. Rodriguez-Reinoso, eds). Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alicante, Chapter 1, pp. 1-34. 

Fig. A1.41. Pearlite in a eutectoid-composition plain-carbon steel, x500. (After K. J. Pascoe, An Introduction to the Properties of Engineering Materials, Van Nostrand Reinhold, London, 1978.)...

The basic questions of The What, The Why, and The How of composite materials and structures have been addressed. Much more could be said about, for example, polymers, metals, ceramics, and carbon used as matrix materials. Also, many more composites manufacturing techniques are available. Moreover, many more examples of effective use of composite materials in structures do exist. However, an introduction to each topic has been provided, and hopefully, those introductions will suffice for the purpose of giving background on composite materials prior to studying their mechanics. 

The following boxes present four case studies to illustrate how the introduction of reference materials has decreased the uncertainty of the chemical oceanographic measurement of salinity (Box 2.1), DOC (Box 2.2), and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) (Box 2.3). Box 2.4 illustrates the acute need for pigment reference materials, which are currently unavailable. 

Figure 2.2 Temperature-Pressure unary phase diagram for carbon. From K. M. Ralls, T. H. Courtney, and J. Wulff, Introduction to Materials Science and Engineering. Copyright 1976 by John Wiley Sons, Inc. This material is used by permission of John Wiley Sons, Inc.

Figure 4.41 Variation with temperature of the diffusivity for carbon in BCC-Fe (a — Fe). Activation energy is in units of J/mol. Reprinted, by permission, from D. R. Gaskell, An Introduction to Transport Phenomena in Materials Engineering, p. 519. Copyright 1992 by Macmillan Publishing Co.

In the following sections some examples are given of the ways in which these principles have been utilized. The first example is the use of these techniques for the low temperature preparation of oxide ceramics such as silica. This process can also be used to produce alumina, titanium oxide, or other metal oxides. The second example describes the conversion of organic polymers to carbon fiber, a process that was probably the inspiration for the later development of routes to a range of non-oxide ceramics. Following this are brief reviews of processes that lead to the formation of silicon carbide, silicon nitride, boron nitride, and aluminum nitride, plus an introduction to the synthesis of other ceramics such as phosphorus nitride, nitrogen-phosphorus-boron materials, and an example of a transition metal-containing ceramic material. 

Nakajima T (ed) (1994) Fluorine-carbon and fluoride-carbon materials. Chemistry physics and applications. Marcel Dekker, New York Pirronello V, Avema D (1998) Astronom Astrophys 196 201 Pirronello V, Liu C, Shen L, Vidali G (1997a) Astrophys J Lett 475 L69 Pirronello V, Biham O, Liu C, Shen L, Vidali G (1997b) Astrophys J Lett 483 L131 Pirronello V, Liu C, Roser JE, Vidali G (1999) Astronom Astrophys 344 681 Somoraj GA (1994) Introduction to surface chemistry and catalysis. Wiley-Interscience, New York Smoluchowski R (1983) J Phys Chem 21 4229... 

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