Carbon Surface Chemistry Modification, Analysis and Impact on Energy Storage and Environmental Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Carbon material has undeniable properties that can be fine-tuned to satisfy several applications. The ability to control morphology, porous texture, structure, and surface chemistry is playing a pivotal role in improving the performance of energy storage devices such as batteries and supercapacitors for water and air remediation, gas storage, and catalysis. In all of these applications, the carbon is in contact with either an electrolyte, a pollutant, or a gas. Its surface chemistry strongly dictates the interactions with these elements and impacts the performance. Inherently, the carbon’s surface is decorated with O-functional groups coming from the precursors, but other heteroatoms might naturally be found in carbon, such as N, S, or P. Functionalisation methods to enhance or modulate these functionalities are widely employed in order to improve the performance or to anchor other species (metal, metal oxides, etc.). The characterisation of these surface functionalities, including X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), IR spectroscopy, temperature-programmed desorption coupled with mass spectrometry (TPD-MS), Boehm titration, and wettability, enables one to determine their nature and amounts, as well as their impact on the performance.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to gather original contributions on innovative methods of surface functionalisation, grafting, and doping of carbon materials (activated carbon, nanoporous carbon, graphene, carbon dots, hard carbon, graphite, etc.). We welcome papers describing the fine characterisation of carbon surface chemistry along with its impact on capacitance in supercapacitors, efficiency and capacity in batteries, the adsorption capacity of molecules, the conversion yield in catalysis, detection in sensors, biocompatibility, etc.

Dr. Camélia Matei Ghimbeu
Dr. Encarnación Raymundo-Piñero
Guest Editors

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• surface functionalization
• functional groups
• heteroelement doping
• supercapacitors
• batteries
• water remediation
• gas storage
• catalysis
• sensors
• medicine