EXPERIMENTAL-VERIFICATION OF THE DOMINANT INFLUENCE OF EXTENDED CARBON NETWORKS ON THE STRUCTURAL, ELECTRICAL AND MAGNETIC-PROPERTIES OF A COMMON SOOT

Common soots are disordered carbonaceous materials containing several per cent of heteroatoms. A question of some importance is to what exte nt pure carbon networks dominate the properties of common soots. Here, we report the results of a comparative study of fullerene soots which are a form of pure partially ordered carbon and those formed from fla ming polystyrene combustion which contain a few per cent of oxygen ato ms, using electron diffraction, electron spin resonance (ESR), infra-r ed transmission and measurements of electrical conductivity. It has be en found that despite some important characteristic differences, the a nnealed fullerene soot and flaming polystyrene soot have a number of i mportant structural, electrical and magnetic features in common, provi ded that the dame and annealing temperatures are the same. This sugges ts that the graphitic layer and fullerene related tubular structures f ound in these materials dominate the electrical properties of these so ots regardless of the presence of small quantities of heteroatoms in t he soot derived from the flaming combustion of polystyrene.