Green production of carbon nanomaterials in molten salts, mechanisms and applications

Corrosion of Si, C, and SiC in molten salt

“…One should note that while standard potentials for Si and C solids are useful to calculate in order to understand corrosion of SiC, corrosion behaviors of Si and C in molten salts are interesting in their own right for fields such as chemical processing technology and device applications [11][12][13][14][15][16]. For instance, processing of Si by molten salts has been suggested to be more cost efficient than conventional processing by the carbothermic reduction of SiO2 [11][12][13][14].…”

“…For instance, processing of Si by molten salts has been suggested to be more cost efficient than conventional processing by the carbothermic reduction of SiO2 [11][12][13][14]. In another example, the electrochemical exfoliation of cathodically charged graphite materials in molten salt has been proposed as an efficient approach for economic and environmentally sustainable production of high quality graphene-derived nanostructures [15,16]. Therefore, although here our primary interest is on corrosion of SiC, we also present thermodynamic calculations for silicon and graphite solids.…”

Clean production and utilisation of hydrogen in molten salts

“…The cathodic polarisation of graphite immersed in molten LiCl at 800 C under a humid atmosphere can lead to the formation of hydrogen on the surface of the graphite, and the hydrogen produced has the capability to exfoliate the graphite material into high quality graphene nanosheets possessing an attractive combination of properties including high electronic conductivity, as high as 5.8 Â 10 5 S m À1 . [71][72][73][74][75] The process is briey illustrated in Fig. 2.…”

Green production of hydrogen-doped faceted cobalt microcrystals using water-assisted molten salt electro-reduction method

“…In this approach, water as a clean source of hydrogen is fed into the molten salt reactor and this consequently leads to the formation of hydrogen cations and oxygen anions in the melt through the hydrolysis reaction. 40 In this way, hydrogen can be generated on cathodically polarised electrodes and utilised for various interesting applications including the efficient exfoliation of graphite to fabricate high-quality graphene, [41][42][43][44] carbon encapsulated silicon 45 and a diamond precursor. 46 The generated hydrogen can also be utilized for the reduction of iron oxides.…”

“…Li 2 O, which are both soluble in the molten salt. This leads to the generation of soluble [H + ] and [O 2À ] species in the melt:[40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47] …”