The new material's morphology resembles graphene but contains a higher number of heteroatoms such as nitrogen and sulfur © Yoobin Chun
By simply heating sugar and salt, researchers in Germany have made a new, and seemingly flat, form of carbon.1 The material shows extraordinary potential for energy storage and electrocatalysis applications.
Nina Fechler from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces and colleagues isolated the puzzling sheet-like material with a constant thickness a few years ago. Unexpectedly the sheets also had a very high surface area (up to 3200m2/g), exceeding a hypothetical single layer graphene material (around 2600m2/g), and showed microporosity at the same time. In addition, it contained many more heteroatoms than could possibly be accommodated within graphene planes, as well as electrochemical characteristics ahead of most ordinary graphene materials.2
The full article can be read in Chemistry World.
The original Materials Horizons article can be read below and is open access:
Xiaofeng Liu, Nina Fechler, Markus Antonietti,* Marc Georg Willinger and Robert Schlögl
Mater. Horiz., 2016, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C5MH00274E
