Building carbon structures inside hollow carbon spheres

Prakash M Gangatharan; Manoko S Maubane-Nkadimeng; Neil J Coville

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-46992-1

Building carbon structures inside hollow carbon spheres

Sci Rep. 2019 Jul 23;9(1):10642. doi: 10.1038/s41598-019-46992-1.

Authors

Prakash M Gangatharan¹, Manoko S Maubane-Nkadimeng^{1

2}, Neil J Coville³

Affiliations

¹ DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Strong Materials and the Molecular Sciences Institute, School of Chemistry, University of the Witwatersrand, 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa.
² Microscopy and Microanalysis Unit, University of the Witwatersrand, 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa.
³ DST-NRF Centre of Excellence in Strong Materials and the Molecular Sciences Institute, School of Chemistry, University of the Witwatersrand, 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa. neil.coville@wits.ac.za.

Abstract

The synthesis and characterization of helical carbon nanofibers (CNFs) contained within a fully confined nanoreactor is described. In particular, hollow carbon spheres (od = ca. 310 nm; wall thickness ca. 20 nm) were infiltrated with Cu ions (1%) to produce CuO particles (<10 nm) and the CuO was converted to Cu particles at temperature of 300 °C. Acetylene was then used as a carbon source to grow helical CNFs within the hollow carbon spheres. The diameter and helicity of the CNFs was influenced by the Cu content within a hollow carbon sphere, the limited Cu sintering inside a sphere as well as the dimensions of the sphere. The procedures employed suggest that the philosophy of building other structures (and molecules) with any elements within confined nanoreactors is possible.