Ordered and Disordered Carbon Structures Detected by TEM in Carbide-derived Carbons Produced from TiC

Nowadays, the selective etching of metal carbides by chlorine gas is one well established method to prepare highly porous and nanostructurated carbon materials with potential applications for hydrogen storage and supercapacitors The obtained products usually named as carbide-derived carbons (CDC) present high purity, high surface area and homogeneous pore size distribution and most of times present a graphitic structure; however, in some cases, disordered carbon nanostructures coexist among the ordered ones [1]. In this study, we report the synthesis and characterisation of CDC materials obtained from TiC at 900 oC. Powder precursor, purity of 99% Aldrich, was heated at 50 °C/min in a tubular furnace during 2 h, in a continuous flow of a mixture containing high purity chlorine gas (25 mL/min) and hydrogen (2.5 mL/min) according the next possible scheme: