Electron microscopy study on microstructure of bamboo charcoal

Bamboo charcoals prepared by different methods were studied by scanning electron microscopy(SEM) and high resolution transmission electron microscopy(HRTEM).The results showed that bamboo charcoal could keep the original morpha of bamboo.The high specific surface area of bamboo charcoal was due to the mini-pores on the cell wall.Increasing the carbonization temperatures would increase the number of mini-pores.The porosity in the bamboo charcoals activated by KOH was remarkably increased.The specific surface area of activated bamboo charcoals with carbonization temperature lower than 600 ℃ was higher than that of activated bamboo charcoals prepared at higher carbonization temperature.Bamboo charcoal was a kind of graphitizable carbon material because the lattice fringes of microcrystalline domain of graphite in bamboo charcoals were with better parallelism.