Synthesis of Carbon Nanomaterials Using High-Voltage Electric Discharge Techniques

New spatial forms of carbon – fullerenes, nanotubes, graphene, etc., attract significant interest since the time of their discovery due to their unique physicochemical and mechanical properties (Afanas'ev et al., 2001; Gogotsi, 2006; Guozhong Cao, 2004; Eletskii & Smirnov, 1995; Shenderova et al., 2002). A lot of investigations have been carried out in this field for the recent years. Hence, the problems of the development of effective synthesis, separation and purification methods for carbon nanomaterials (CNM) remain importance. Therefore, it is of special interest to clarify the possibility of application of electric discharge techniques, such as the electric wires explosion (EWE) (Kuskova, 2005; Kuskova et al., 2010; Rud et al., 2007, 2011), the spark erosion of materials (Bulgakov et al., 2009; Rud et al., 2007), developed for manufacturing metallic nanopowders, and the electric breakdown of dielectric liquids (EBOL) (Rud et al., 2011) for synthesis of CNM and investigation of structural and physical properties of synthesized materials. The physical basis of electric discharge technology of synthesis of different forms of CNM consists in the injection into working medium– a source of carbon, energy need for its heating, evaporation and destruction through a passage of powerful (up to 1 MA) current pulses with frequencies of 0.1-10 Hz. As a result, structural and phase transformations of carbon or destruction of molecules of organic liquids on individual fragments take place with their subsequent ultrafast cooling and synthesis of different types of CNM. Thus, it is possible to control effectively the structural and phase state of the synthesized CNM by the followings: variation of the injected into working medium energy by changing the energy deposited in the capacitor bank and the number of current pulses; selection of the working medium a source of carbon ( using graphite conductors of different geometry or hydrocarbons with different chemical nature). Electric explosions of graphite conductors were performed in different cooling media (ethanol, toluene, hexane) in the interval of deposited energies of capacitor bank W0 from 0.1 to 45 kJ and the inductance of the discharge circuit L from 1 to 50 ┤H. Charging voltage U0 and capacitance C of the capacitor bank was varied from 10 to 50 kV and from 1 to 36 ┤F, respectively. The electrical circuit of the experimental setup is shown in Fig. 1. The use of