Carbon nanomaterials and their synthesis from plant-derived precursors

Carbon nanomaterials are at the verge of becoming an important material for various industrial applications. The main hurdle in the production of Carbon Nanomaterial (CNM) is the cost of the raw material. There are two components in producing the CNM, the precursors and the technique of the synthesis. It is almost certain that Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) technique would be most suitable for the production of large quantity of CNM. As a result CVD technique is being explored by many research groups for the synthesis of CNM. The availability of precursor is another factor which controls the cost of production of carbon nanomaterials. Precursors obtained from fossil fuel and petroleum products have been mostly used for this purpose. But there is always a fear of their being depleted. Hence there is a need to search for new sources of precursors which are not fossil-fuel based. In this review efforts are made to highlight the application of precursors which are derived from plant derived materials and efforts are made to suggest that plant derived precursors can yield CNM of similar and some time even better quality than one would normally get by using fossil fuel material and products derived from petroleum product. The advantage of using plant-derived precursors is that unlike fossil fuel they can be cultivated in required quantity as and when needed and there is no fear of their being depleted.