First-principles calculation and transmission electron microscopy observation for hydrogen adsorption on carbon nanowalls

Abstract

Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) technique was used to investigate the structure of carbon nanowalls (CNWs). The TEM observation clearly indicated the existence of the bended graphene structure in boundary regions between the crystallites of CNWs. According to this TEM result, the first-principles calculation was employed for the bended coronene molecule as the model of the boundary region between the crystallites of CNWs, to elucidate the mechanism of the hydrogen adsorption to CNWs. The hydrogen adsorption energies onto both on-top and hollow sites become greater as the bending angle increases, because the electronic structure of the carbon atom at the adsorption site changes from sp2 to sp3 hybridization character by natural bond orbital analysis. Our computational result is reasonably consistent with the specific feature of hydrogen adsorption to CNWs, which had been reported in our previous work by ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy and temperature program desorption measurements by Kinoshita et al.[Chem. Phys. Lett. 450, 360 (2008)].