Synthesis of Carbide Derived Carbon by Reactive Anode Electrolysis in Molten Chloride Salts

Carbide Derived Carbon (CDC) has tunable properties that have been used in supercapacitors, biomaterials, and in tribological applications. However the processes to produce CDC utilizes chlorine gas to etch the substrate. Chlorine is undesirable due to health and environmental reasons, difficulty in transporting, using and maintaining equipment on a production scale, and also the temperatures and times required for etching thicker films often result in graphitization. A novel method utilizing reactive anode electrolysis of Ti2AlC and SiC in molten chloride salts is presented as an alternative process for synthesizing CDC. It is shown by Raman spectroscopy that this method is capable of producing Ti2AlC-CDC and SiC-CDC consisting of an amorphous carbon matrix that contains nanocrystalline graphite and graphite. A thermodynamic model is presented for estimating the cell potential and it is also shown that electrolysis can be performed on substrates with low room temperature electrical conductivity and that the structure of CDC can be tuned by adjusting the voltage.