Structural Evolution in Iron-Catalyzed Graphitization of Hard Carbons

Despite the recent interest in catalytic graphitization to obtain graphite-like materials from hard-carbon sources, many aspects of its mechanism are still poorly unknown. We performed a series situ experiments study phase transformations during precursor using an iron catalyst at temperatures up 1100 °C and ex total scattering 2000 structural evolution resulting graphitized carbon. Our results show that upon heating cooling, undergoes reductions form hematite, magnetite, wüstite before forming carbide later decomposes into metallic additional graphite fraction increases with increasing peak temperature. Structural development temperature decreasing sheet curvature increased stacking, along decrease turbostratic disorder 1600 °C. Higher result larger graphitic domains without further ordering graphene sheets. have implications for synthesis novel biomass-derived carbon enhanced crystallinity.