Effect of reaction temperature on carbon films prepared by a hydrothermal electrochemical method

Carbon films were synthesized under hydrothermal electrochemical conditions using sugar as the carbon source at temperature ranging from 170 °C to 180 °C. The reaction temperature affects the degree of sugar decomposition, the concentration of carbon ions, supersaturation and overpotential of the solution, thereby affecting the morphology, orientation, and crystallinity of the films. The graphitic content (sp2) increases with increasing the processing temperature and vice versa. The higher the synthesizing temperature the less the amount of amorphous carbon (sp3). The graphite in thin films prepared at 170 °C and 175 °C shows a (101) preferred orientation, whereas those prepared at 180 °C show a fairly random orientation. The mechanism of this synthesizing process seems to consist of three stages.