Paper made from wood pulp was changed chemically into carbonized paper.

What is it about?

Paper is usually composed of lots of cellulosic fibrils short in length oriented at random. We have shown that paper is able to be carbonized in the form of the original paper using a catalyst, sulfonic acid, at high temperatures without thermal decomposition. The paper carbonized at a temperature of 800℃ was almost amorphous. However, the crystallinity of the carbonized paper was increased by a heat-treatment at higher temperatures. In other word, the paper was able to be graphtized by the heat-treatment. Moreover, mechanical and electrical properties of the carbonized paper were enhanced by the heat-treatment at higher temperatures. The main text of this paper was written in Japanese langege. However, one of our research papers concering carbonization of cellulosic materials has been published in Global Challenges, Vol.1, 2017, 1700061, published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. Especially, the carbonization method of the cellulosic materials without thermal decomposition was described also in the paper in Glabal Challenges mentioned above.

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Why is it important?

It has been believed that carbonization of organic materials including cellulosic ones in an atmosphere of non-oxgen gas at high temperatures accompanies with thermal decomposition so far. Particulary, organic polymeic materials decompose thermally into low weight moleculs following lots of gases at high temperatures. So initial shapes of the materials such as fibers and sheets are lost and the carbon yields become lower. We have found that cellulosic materials are able to be carbonized without thermal decomposition. In this paper we have shown that carbonized papers having electrical conductivity can be obtained from wood pulp papers by the carbonization without thermal decomposition.

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