Catalytic synthesis of nanodiamond based on CDC principle: influence of different catalysts on types and sizes.

Recently, we have successfully realized the catalytic synthesis of nanodiamond (ND) by embedding the Fe catalyst into carbide under high stress, followed by chlorine-etching at atmospheric pressure. In this work, we selected Fe, Co and Ni as the catalyst, and TiC as the precursor, aiming at investigating the influence of the catalyst type on the synthesis of NDs. The results have shown that all the three catalysts can catalyze the synthesis of ND structure, where various types of NDs have been observed.

Fe-catalytic synthesis of nanodiamond during the chlorination of vanadium carbide at ambient pressure: influence of the Fe-introduction mode.

The development of technical strategies for synthesizing nanodiamond (ND) under moderate conditions is still an attractive and challenging issue. Herein, an attempt has been made to investigate the effect of the Fe-introduction mode on the catalytic synthesis of ND during the chlorination of vanadium carbide (VC) at ambient pressure. The results show that when Fe powder as a catalyst is adhered on the surface of the VC particle, the resultant carbide-derived carbon (CDC) by chlorinating VC at 800 °C behaves as a remarkably higher structural ordering.

Chemically exfoliated highly conductive layer-tunable graphene by simply controlling the exfoliating temperature.

The development of effective strategies for the massive production of layer-number tunable graphene is of great importance to satisfy the requirements in versatile applications such as energy storage, thermal management, photocatalysis. However, how to prepare the layer-tunable graphene by a simple and efficient way is still a great challenge. Herein, an attempt has been made to exfoliate graphite into layer-tunable graphene by simply soaking the graphite in a binary-component solution composed of HSO and (NH)SO.