Versatile nanostructured functionalization of 2D carbon surfaces

Carbon-based materials form the backbone of many industrial applications such as chemical purification, separation technology and, gas adsorption and storage. The applicability of most of these materials, which are composed of two-dimensional (2D) sheets of sp2 hybridized carbon called graphene, is a result of their porosity and high surface area. A large variety of these come from natural sources and/or are produced in such a way that their chemical identity and composition is often not unique. Though such relatively ill-defined materials are already in use for many decades, there is need to develop a knowledge-intensive approach for functional carbonaceous materials that possess unique chemical identity and composition which could be tailor-made for specific applications. Robustly tailoring 2D carbon surfaces could lead to increased efficiency of catalytic, separations, and gas adsorption platforms. This PhD project aims to build a fundamental knowledge base for fabrication of covalently modified carbon surfaces with specific chemical identity and composition. Apart from simply controlling the density of the functional groups, we will target precise control over their nanometer scale spatial arrangement on the surface, and upscaling. Such nanostructured covalent modification is expected to impart novel functional properties to the material. The covalently modified 2D carbon surfaces will be tested for their properties, and for their applicability in typical applications such as catalysis