Carbon Compounds

Metal carbon compound is a kind of material with high mechanical strength and hardness. This material is an intermetallic filling compound formed by filling the pores of carbon atoms into the metal lattice. Metal carbon compounds are mostly transition metal carbon compounds, which have the characteristics of metallic luster, good conductivity, high melting point and high hardness, so they are often used as important raw materials for cemented carbide.

Figure 1. The type of metal and carbon doping.

Applications:

• Catalysts: Carbon compounds have shown excellent catalytic performance in a series of reactions, including the hydroprocessing of petroleum fractions, the isomerization of hydrocarbons, the hydrogenation of hydrocarbons, the electrode reactions in fuel cells, conversion of methane, dehydrogenation and aromatization of alkanes. These reactions catalyzed by carbon compounds have shown catalytic activity comparable to that of precious metals, and some of them even surpass precious metals. In particular, in the hydrorefining of petroleum fractions, it not only has high activity for removing harmful S and N elements in the fraction, but also has high isomerization activity with hydrocarbons.
• Electrode materials: Industrially, the metal carbon compound powder is directly made into a disc shape by the cold pressing method as the anode of the lithium-ion battery, which can enhance the cycle stability of the lithium battery and obtain a good specific capacity. Therefore, metal carbon compounds have a good application prospect in the field of energy storage.
• Adsorption and separation: The metal carbon composite nanosheet with functional groups on the surface can selectively permeate ions according to the size of ions and pores. The thickness of this membrane can be several hundred nanometers to several tens of micrometers. It has good mechanical strength, hydrophilicity and conductivity, and has a good selectivity as well as high efficiency in terms of separation.
• Bioelectrochemical field: Metal carbon compounds can be used to immobilize hemoglobin and assemble freely adjustable biosensors, which have a wide linear range, good sensitivity and low detection limit for nitrite detection.
• Other fields: Nanomaterials of metal carbon compounds can be used as lubricating additives to reduce mechanical resistance and improve thier anti-wear ability; the composite film prepared by combining metal carbon compounds and organic polymer compounds is of high toughness and lubricity, which can reduce surface friction, and it is expected to be applied in the field of mechanical transmission.

References:

1. Kexin Tang, Terence Zhi Xiang Hong, Liming You and Kun Zhou. Carbon–metal compound composite electrodes for capacitive deionization: synthesis, development and applications [J]. J. Mater. Chem. A, 2019, 7, 26693–26743.
2. Hao-Fan Wang, Liyu Chen, Huan Pang, Stefan Kaskel and Qiang Xu. MOF-derived electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction, oxygen evolution and hydrogen evolution reactions [J]. Chem. Soc. Rev., 2020, 49, 1414-1448.
3. H. Hamoudi, G. R. Berdiyorov, K. Ariga and V. Esaulov. Bottom-up fabrication of the multi-layer carbon metal nanosheets [J]. RSC Adv., 2020, 10, 7987–7993.