Versatile and Scalable Approaches to Tune Carbon Black Characteristics for Boosting Adsorption and VOC Sensing Applications

This chapter explores the potential use of carbon black (CB) as point of departure to design a highly varied array of materials with practical applications in energetics, remediation, and sensoristics. Thanks to its graphenic moieties embedded in a nanostructured backbone, CB is prone to be structurally and chemically modified exploiting quite mild chemical conditions. The proposed approaches, implying an easy tuning of the chemo-physical properties to the specific needs, are thought up to meet urgent sustainability needs: low costs, scalability, and flexibility. In this chapter, we will describe the modification of CB at the surface (i.e., introduction of oxygen functional group, functionalization, coating with active phases) and a highly CB destructuration to produce graphene-related materials (GRMs) suitable for film production and for the designing of new hybrid materials. CB is converted into highly homogenous CB-modified nanoparticles (around 160 nm) with adjustable surface properties (hydrophilicity, type and surface charge density, pore size distribution) and in highly versatile GRMs for the production of structured electrical conductive ultrathin films for trace alcohol sensing and a wide array of hybrid materials, including photocatalysts (carbon-iron oxide, silica-carbon, carbon-titanium oxide hybrids) for adsorption applications (CO2 capture, heavy metal capture).