Designing rigid carbon foams

TL;DR

This paper uses ab initio calculations to explore the properties of schwarzite carbon structures, highlighting their stability, electronic features, and potential applications in energy storage and electronics.

Contribution

It introduces specific schwarzite structures with unique electronic and magnetic properties, proposing their use in batteries and super-capacitors.

Findings

Schwarzites are stable, metallic, and highly rigid.

Porous schwarzites enable efficient doping for energy applications.

Certain schwarzites can act as quantum spin dot arrays or become magnetic upon doping.

Abstract

We use ab initio density functional calculations to study the stability, elastic properties and electronic structure of sp2 carbon minimal surfaces with negative Gaussian curvature, called schwarzites. We focus on two systems with cubic unit cells containing 152 and 200 carbon atoms, which are metallic and very rigid. The porous schwarzite structure allows for efficient and reversible doping by electron donors and acceptors, making it a promising candidate for the next generation of alkali ion batteries. We identify schwarzite structures that act as arrays of interconnected quantum spin dots or become magnetic when doped. We introduce two interpenetrating schwarzite structures that may find their use as the ultimate super-capacitor.