Nanocarbons for the Development of Advanced Catalysts

Nanocarbon is a term increasingly used to indicate the broad range of carbon materials having a tailored nanoscale dimension and functional properties that significantly depend on their nanoscale features. CNT and graphene belong to this class of materials comprising many more types of carbon materials, such as nanofibers, -coils, -diamonds, -horns, -onions, and fullerene. The field of application of nanocarbon materials is large, because they possess electrical and thermal conductivity, as well as a mechanical strength and lightness that conventional materials cannot match. With the diversity of their structure, these characteristic values can be achieved over an extremely wide range of conditions. For these reasons, they are extensively studied in applications going from photonics and optoelectronics to biotech and nanomedicine, advanced electrodes, and polymer composites. It should be mentioned that for commercial applications a comprehensive understanding of the catalyst structure, bonding, and properties is desirable, but not strictly necessary, provided that the catalysts are well-reproducible and give superior performances.