Structure of new carbonaceous materials:: The role of vibrational spectroscopy

The search for materials aimed at energy storage has prompted the synthesis of new materials which were obtained by pyrolysis of aromatic precursors under controlled conditions for the production of carbon based structurally disordered networks aimed at hydrogen or lithium storage. Obviously these materials consist of fully insoluble mixtures of different molecular species which escape the traditional physico-chemical techniques for structure determination. With the purpose of overcoming this difficulty we have developed and report here a systematic vibrational spectroscopic work which lays the basic concepts to be considered in the structural understanding of the molecules studied and can be extended to similar classes of complex carbonaceous materials. The (partial) structure of these systems and some of the reaction pathways at the molecular level can be inferred from the spectroscopic signals presented and discussed to be taken as key features for structural analysis. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.