Mosquito’s Compound Eyes as Inspiration for Fabrication of Conductive Superhydrophobic Nanocarbon Materials from Waste Wheat Straw

Abstract

Converting waste wheat straw to conductive superhydrophobic nanocarbon materials is inspired by mosquito’s compound eyes, and a one step pyrolysis process is used for controllable construction of micro/nanohierarchical structures. Their structures and hydrophobicity can be tuned efficiently by the annealing temperature. Scanning electron microscopy, elemental analysis, X-ray diffraction, laser Raman, Fourier transform infrared, and photoelectron spectroscopy analyses were used to reveal the structure of electrical conductive carbon materials (ECMs) and a possible mechanism of the nanostructures formation. These results indicate that there are big differences between the surface and the inner structure for the nanocarbon materials, and the releasing rates of a multicomponent gas at different annealing temperatures by further decomposition of waste wheat straw should be pivotal to the formation of nanostructures. There is also cause for superhydrophobicity and electroconductivity for the ECM-800. Considerin...