Highly crystalline graphite-like carbon from wood via low-temperature catalytic graphitization
Yuta Nakayasu,
Yasuto Goto,
Yuto Katsuyama,
Takashi Itoh,
Masaru Watanabe
Affiliations
Yuta Nakayasu
Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences (FRIS), Tohoku University, 6-3 Aoba, Aza, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980–8578, Japan; Research Center of Supercritical Fluid Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-11 Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980–8579, Japan; Corresponding authors.
Yasuto Goto
Research Center of Supercritical Fluid Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-11 Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980–8579, Japan
Yuto Katsuyama
Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences (FRIS), Tohoku University, 6-3 Aoba, Aza, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980–8578, Japan; Research Center of Supercritical Fluid Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-11 Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980–8579, Japan; Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, 90095, USA.
Takashi Itoh
Frontier Research Institute for Interdisciplinary Sciences (FRIS), Tohoku University, 6-3 Aoba, Aza, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980–8578, Japan
Masaru Watanabe
Research Center of Supercritical Fluid Technology, Department of Chemical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, 6-6-11 Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980–8579, Japan; Corresponding authors.
In this study, we investigated the synthesis of wood-sawdust-derived high-crystalline graphite-like carbon. The sawdust was first impregnated with Fe and semi-carbonized by a hydrothermal treatment (HT) at 250°C, followed by the second carbonization under N2 atmosphere and acid washing. For an iron-to-sawdust weight ratio of 4:10, graphite-like carbon was synthesized at a very low temperature of 850°C. This carbon has an average interlayer distance and crystallite size (d002: 0.337 nm, La: 35.8 nm, and Lc: 56.1 nm) comparable to those of commercial graphite. The large size of the Fe crystal particles facilitates the development of a stacked structure of carbon sheets. The HT with Fe-impregnated sawdust generates larger iron oxide particles than simple semi-carbonization with Fe-impregnated sawdust under N2 atmosphere at 250°C, facilitating the development of more crystalline graphite-like carbon. It was also found that the crystallinity of the graphitic carbon obtained after second carbonization may be controlled by the amount and particle size of the added Fe.
