Heat Treatment of Buckypaper for Use in Volatile Organic Compounds Sampling

Abstract EN

Three types of buckypapers (BPs), two of them fabricated with arc discharge (AD) single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) (acetone-cleaned AD BP and methanol-cleaned AD BP) and one with high-pressure carbon monoxide (HiPco) SWNTs (HiPco BP), were heat-treated at different conditions to find the specific conditions for each type that improve the adsorption properties.

Based on thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) data, three heat treatment conditions were designed for the AD BPs and another three conditions for the HiPco BPs.

Also, changes in weight and physical integrity before and after the heat treatment were considered.

Heating at 300°C for 90 minutes was selected for acetone-cleaned AD BP, in which the BP kept its physical integrity and yielded a relatively high Brunauer, Emmett, and Teller (BET) surface area (970 ± 18 m2/g), while methanol-cleaned AD BP was excluded because of its physical change.

For HiPco BP, a condition of 300°C heating for 30 minutes was chosen as a relatively higher surface area (933 ± 54 m2/g) and less weight loss (5%) were observed.