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Fabrication of carbon nanorods and graphene nanoribbons from a metal–organic framework

Nature Chemistry volume 8, pages 718–724 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

One- and two-dimensional carbon nanomaterials are attracting considerable attention because of their extraordinary electrical, mechanical and thermal properties, which could lead to a range of important potential applications. Synthetic processes associated with making these materials can be quite complex and also consume large amounts of energy, so a major challenge is to develop simple and efficient methods to produce them. Here, we present a self-templated, catalyst-free strategy for the synthesis of one-dimensional carbon nanorods by morphology-preserved thermal transformation of rod-shaped metal–organic frameworks. The as-synthesized non-hollow (solid) carbon nanorods can be transformed into two- to six-layered graphene nanoribbons through sonochemical treatment followed by chemical activation. The performance of these metal–organic framework-derived carbon nanorods and graphene nanoribbons in supercapacitor electrodes demonstrates that this synthetic approach can produce functionally useful materials. Moreover, this approach is readily scalable and could be used to produce carbon nanorods and graphene nanoribbons on industrial levels.

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Figure 1: Synthesis and characterization of MOF and carbon nanostructures.
Figure 2: Morphological evolution of MOF-74-Rod, carbon nanorods and graphene nanoribbons.
Figure 3: Applications of graphene nanoribbons and carbon nanorods for electrochemical energy storage.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the reviewers for comments and suggestions, T. Uchida (AIST) and S.K. Soni (RMIT) for microscopic measurements, and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) for financial support (KAKENHI no. 26289379). D.S. and M.M. thank the Australian Research Council for partial support through an ARC Discovery grant (DP 110100082).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Ikeda, 563-8577, Osaka, Japan

    Pradip Pachfule & Qiang Xu

  2. Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, Nanoscale Science and Engineering Laboratory (NSEL), Monash University, Clayton, 3800, Victoria, Australia

    Dhanraj Shinde & Mainak Majumder

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  1. Pradip Pachfule
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Contributions

All authors contributed extensively to the work presented in this paper. P.P. and Q.X. conceived the research project. P.P. conducted the experiments and performed the characterizations. D.S. and M.M. recorded the AFM images and performed the conductivity experiments. P.P. and Q.X. wrote the manuscript with the input from the other authors.

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Correspondence to Qiang Xu.

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Pachfule, P., Shinde, D., Majumder, M. et al. Fabrication of carbon nanorods and graphene nanoribbons from a metal–organic framework. Nature Chem 8, 718–724 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2515

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