The Characterization of Thin Layers of Carbon Particulate Deposited in Rich Premixed Flames

In the energy production and transport field, fuel-rich combustion has to be avoided to limit environmental impact related to the formation/emission of undesired carbonaceous species. On the other side, fuel-rich combustion features some pyrolytic processes used to produce carbon materials as carbon black, and is currently studied as a source of advanced graphene-like materials. The fuel-rich combustion process is a peculiar "self-sustaining system" for carbon material production, being both a heat and carbon source since most of the hydrocarbon reactant oxidizes generating the high temperature environment necessary to the surplus of hydrocarbons for producing carbon-based nanostructures. Metal or silica-based grids are mainly used for deposition and growth of thin layers. The morphology and thickness of the thin layers are among the parameters important to be measured to verify the quality of the deposited material. To this aim, in the present work techniques as surface profilometry and atomic force microscopy (AFM) have been implemented on carbon layers deposited in a fuel-rich ethylene flamer. The results have been compared with those obtained by UV-Visible and ellipsometry spectroscopic measurements obtaining information about the density of the arrangement of the particles in the deposited layer.