STRUCTURE OF NON-GRAPHITISING CARBONS

Despite many years of research, the detailed atomic structure of many important carbon materials remains poorly understood. In particular, t he structure of those carbons which can not be transformed into graphi te by high temperature heat treatment has never been clearly establish ed. These non-graphitising carbons are of considerable commercial impo rtance in a variety of fields, and a better understanding of their str ucture is clearly needed. Recently, it has been suggested that non-gra phitising carbons may have a microstructure which is related to that o f fullerenes. In the present paper, the evidence for this will be cons idered in detail and the advantages of the new model over previous mod els of non-graphitising carbons will be discussed. As well as micropor ous non-graphitising carbons, other forms of carbon including glassy c arbon and carbon fibres will be considered.