Extracting of fullerene-like nanoparticles from environmental soots

ABSTRACT

It is well known that burning graphite electrodes in electric arc is an efficient method for obtaining of fullerenes. However, fullerenes form in any sooting flames. Therefore, detection fullerene in natural burning fuel is of a great interest for understanding of mechanism of soot formation. This research extracted samples of environmental soots in toluene. Soots and products of extraction were characterized by UV-vis spectroscopy, sedimentation analysis, atomic force microscopy. Analysis of extracts found fullerene-like clusters. The concentration of particles decreased in the following sequence: charcoal – carbon black – gas soot.

KEYWORDS:

• Fullerenes
• carbon cluster
• soot
• charcoal
• UV-vis spectroscopy

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Igor Zabiyaka and Boris Mitin engineers of Science Education Resource Center “Materials” of Don State Technical University for sedimentation analysis and atomic force microscopy. The work was performed under financial support of the Don State Technical University, grant L.V. Krasnichenko.