Production and characterization of carbon nano colloid via one-step electrochemical method

We present a one-step electrochemical method to produce water-based stable carbon nano colloid (CNC) without adding any surfactants at the room temperature. The physical, chemical, and thermal properties of CNC prepared were characterized by using various techniques, such as particle size analyzer, zeta potential meter, TEM, XRD, FT-IR, turbidity meter, viscometer, and transient hot-wire method. The average primary size of the suspended spherical-shaped nanoparticles in the CNC was found to be similar to 15 nm in diameter. The thermal conductivity of CNC compared with that of water was observed to increase up to similar to 14% with the CNC concentration of similar to 4.2 wt%. The CNC prepared in this study was considerably stable over the period of 600 h. With the assistance of FT-IR spectroscopy analysis, we confirmed the presence of carboxyl group (i.e., O-H stretching (3,458 cm(-1)) and C=O stretching (1,712 cm(-1))) formed in the outer atomic layer of carbon nanoparticles, which (i) made the carbon particles hydrophilic and (ii) prevented the aggregation among primary nanoparticles by increasing the magnitude of zeta potential over the long period.