Synthesis of novel carbon nanostructures by annealing of silicon-carbon nanoparticles at atmospheric pressure

M Miettinen (Corresponding Author), Jouni Hokkinen, T Karhunen, T Torvela, C Pfüller, M Ramsteiner, Unto Tapper, Ari Auvinen, Jorma Jokiniemi, A Lähde

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

    14 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Annealing of silicon-carbon nanoparticles was performed in argon at atmospheric pressure to enable formation of silicon carbide nanomaterials and/or carbon structures. Three precursor powders with increasing crystallinity and annealing temperatures from 1,900 to 2,600 °C were used to gain information about the effect of precursor properties (e.g. amorphous vs. nanocrystalline, carbon content) and annealing temperature on the produced materials. Three structures were found after annealing, i.e. silicon carbide crystals, carbon sheets and spherical carbon particles. The produced SiC crystals consisted of several polytypes. Low annealing temperature and increasing crystallinity of the precursor promoted the formation of the 3C-SiC polytype. Raman analysis indicated the presence of single-layer, undoped graphene in the sheets. The spherical carbon particles consisted of curved carbon layers growing from the amorphous Si-C core and forming a 'nanoflower' with a diameter below 60 nm. To our knowledge, the formation of this kind of structures has not been reported previously. The core was visible in transmission electron microscopy analysis at the annealing temperature of 1,900 °C, decreased in size with increasing temperature and disappeared above an annealing temperature of 2,200 °C. With increasing crystallinity of the precursor material, fewer layers (~5 with the most crystalline precursor) were detected in the carbon nanoflowers. The method presented opens up the possibility to produce new carbon nanostructures whose properties can be controlled by changing the properties of the precursor material or by adjusting an annealing temperature
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number2168
    JournalJournal of Nanoparticle Research
    Volume16
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2014
    MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

    Keywords

    • Si-C nanoparticles
    • induction heating
    • atmospheric pressure
    • SiC sublimation
    • 3C-SiC
    • graphene growth
    • nanocomposites

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