Thermal analysis of carbon nanomaterials: advantages and problems of interpretation

Thermal analysis of carbon nanomaterials is a useful tool to investigate their synthesis and modification techniques. The properties and thermal behavior of carbon nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes, carbon nanofibers, graphene, and graphene-related materials mainly determine their fields of application. The parameters of thermal investigation of carbon nanomaterials, such as heating rate, gas atmosphere, heating regime, make it possible to study the important characteristics useful for their further applications: oxidation rate, amount of catalyst, yield, activation energy, and other kinetic parameters of oxidation process, etc. The main advantages of thermal analysis for characterization of carbon nanomaterials were discussed. The important features on the interpretation of differential scanning calorimetry data of graphite oxide and graphene oxide were formulated. A comparison of TGA and DSC data on graphene oxide reduction during heating has been made. In this review, we focus on recent advances in thermal analysis (mainly, thermogravimetric analysis and differential scanning calorimetry) of carbon nanomaterials.