Adventitious hydrocarbons and the graphite-water interface
By Hurst, Justin M.; Li, Lei; Liu, Haitao
Published in Carbon
2018
Abstract
This paper reports the adsorption of airborne and waterborne hydrocarbon contaminants on graphite and their impact on the graphite-water interfacial properties. Exposing a freshly exfoliated highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) surface to ambient air and 1-octadecene vapor (ca. 1 ppm) caused a ca. 30% and 70% decrease in its double layer capacitance, respectively. Similarly, a 38% decrease of capacitance was observed within 1500 min after a freshly cleaved HOPG was immersed in 1 M NaCl solution; liquid phase ellipsometry data showed that a contamination layer of ca. 0.6