Depolymerization of cellulose offers the prospect of inexpensive sugars from biomass. Breaking the glycosidic bonds of cellulose to liberate glucose has usually been pursued by acid or enzymatic hydrolysis although a purely thermal depolymerization route to sugars is also possible. Fast pyrolysis of pure cellulose yields primarily the anhydrosugar levoglucosan (LG) whereas the presence of natur...

Carbon is the most well-known black material in the history of man. Throughout the centuries, carbon has been used as a black material for paintings, camouflage, and optics. Although, the techniques to make other black surfaces have evolved and become more sophisticated with time, carbon still remains one of the best black materials. Another well-known black surface is black silicon, reflecting...

A comparative study of the physical adsorption of RNAse A and RNAse Bacillus pumilis onto a negatively charged surface of mica, a hydrophobic surface of pyrolytic graphite and a surface of lipid layers of dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) was performed by atomic force microscopy. It was found that microbial RNAse, unlike RNAse A, 1) is adsorbed onto the negatively charged surface of mica in...

A differential sputter yield measurement technique is described, which consists of a quartz crystal monitor that is swept at constant radial distance from a small target region where a high current density xenon ion beam is aimed. This apparatus has been used to characterize the sputtering behavior of various forms of carbon including polycrystalline graphite, pyrolytic graphite, and PVD-infilt...

A self-assembled supramolecular metallacyclic rectangle was investigated with scanning tunneling microscopy on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite and Au(111) surfaces. The rectangles spontaneously adsorb on both surfaces and self-organize into well ordered adlayers. On highly oriented pyrolytic graphite, the long edge of the rectangle stands on the surface, forming a 2D molecular network. In co...

Chemical vapor deposition and infiltration of pyrolytic carbon for the production of carbon fiber reinforced carbon is studied by modeling approaches and computational tools developed recently. Firstly, the development of a gas-phase reaction mechanism of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of carbon from unsaturated light hydrocarbons (C2H4, C2H2, and C3H6) is presented. The mechanism consisting o...