The detailed evolution of carbon spheres by hydrothermal method

Abstract

Carbon spheres (CSs) can be synthesized easily by hydrothermal method using various solutions and a lot of mechanisms have been employed to explain their formation. In our work, some special phenomena such as the uniform size and surface corruption have been found as the reaction time increased. However, less attention has been focused on the detailed evolution phenomena of CSs. In order to understand these special phenomena well, classical nucleation theory was employed to study the reaction dynamics of CSs during the evolution processes. This work not only deeply reveals the evolution mechanism of CSs, but also opens a possible way for the control of size and morphologies of CSs through hydrothermal methods.