Thermal and Electrical Properties of Carbons Relationship to Structure

Abstract

The electrical resistivity, magnetoresistance and thermal conductivity are properties which concern the transport of quasi-paticles; electrons, holes and phonons. We will show below that these transport properties me particularly striucture-sensitive in carbons and graphites. Indeed, if one is able to design and control their structure, it is possible to tailor these properties at a predetermined level. As a corollary, the analysis of te results of measurements of the electrical resistivity, the magnetoresistance and the thermal conductivity allows an insist into the defect structure of various types of carbon materials to be gained. Thus, they may be used as tools to characterize these materials at the scale of a macroscopic sample yielding useful information about their sfructure. These data complemmt the infonnation obtained by means of the traditional meteds used for characterization puposes, such as SEM, high resolution TEM, X-ray diffraction, STM, AFM. However, while these techniques only probe a tiny portion of a macroscopic sample, the information obtained from electrical and thermal transport measuranents gives am overall view over the entire sample. Also, in some peticular situations, transport data may be sensitive to defects, which could not be detected by fraditional methods.