Studies on Nanostructured Amorphous Carbon by X-ray Diffraction and Small Angle X-ray Scattering

The structural studies of amorphous isotropic carbon prepared from pyrolysis of phenol formaldehyde resin have been carried out using X-ray diffraction. X-ray diffraction from as prepared sample at $1000^{\circ}C$ and a sample treated at $1900^{\circ}C$ revealed that both are amorphous even though there are small differences in short range order. It is found that both are graphite like carbon (GLC) with predominantly $sp^2$ hybridization. Small angle X-ray scattering results show that as prepared sample mainly consists of thin two dimensional platelets of graphitic carbon whereas they grow in thickness to become three dimensional materials of nano dimensions.