Structure of new carbonaceous materials: The role of vibrational spectroscopy Original Research Article

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.