Temperature and Copper Concentration Effects on the Formation of Graphene-Encapsulated Copper Nanoparticles from Kraft Lignin

Weiqi Leng; H Michael Barnes; Zhiyong Cai; Jilei Zhang

doi:10.3390/ma10060677

Temperature and Copper Concentration Effects on the Formation of Graphene-Encapsulated Copper Nanoparticles from Kraft Lignin

Materials (Basel). 2017 Jun 21;10(6):677. doi: 10.3390/ma10060677.

Authors

Weiqi Leng^{1

2}, H Michael Barnes³, Zhiyong Cai⁴, Jilei Zhang⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Sustainable Bioproducts, Mississippi State University, Mississippi, MS 39762, USA. wleng@fs.fed.us.
² U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, WI 53726, USA. wleng@fs.fed.us.
³ Department of Sustainable Bioproducts, Mississippi State University, Mississippi, MS 39762, USA. mike.barnes@msstate.edu.
⁴ U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, Madison, WI 53726, USA. zcai@fs.fed.us.
⁵ Department of Sustainable Bioproducts, Mississippi State University, Mississippi, MS 39762, USA. jz27@msstate.edu.

Abstract

The effects of temperature and copper catalyst concentration on the formation of graphene-encapsulated copper nanoparticles (GECNs) were investigated by means of X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy-attenuated total reflectance, and transmission electron microscopy. Results showed that higher amounts of copper atoms facilitated the growth of more graphene islands and formed smaller size GECNs. A copper catalyst facilitated the decomposition of lignin at the lowest temperature studied (600 °C). Increasing the temperature up to 1000 °C retarded the degradation process, while assisting the reconfiguration of the defective sites of the graphene layers, thus producing higher-quality GECNs.

Keywords: copper concentration; graphene-encapsulated copper nanoparticles; temperature.