Variations in Laser-Induced Carbon from Structurally Varied Poly(furfuryl alcohol)

Abstract

The laser-induced graphene technique, wherein a polymer precursor is irradiated by a CO2 IR laser, provides a simple method for patterning of carbon materials like graphene or glassy carbon under ambient conditions. This is a highly attractive method of carbonization for applications in electronics and energy storage devices, and fine tuning of the laser-induced carbon’s properties is permitted by the choice of precursor. For example, glassy carbon with its disordered structure and defects is desirable for high-performance supercapacitors and so an appropriate precursor can be selected to form glassy carbon by laser irradiation instead of graphene. However, direct structure-property correlations between the precursor and the nature of the resulting laser-induced carbon as well as its quality are unclear. To investigate this, poly(furfuryl alcohol) (PFA), a glassy carbon precursor that is infamously comprised of several structural motifs aside from its monomer unit, was synthesized under a variety of reaction conditions to create three series with different key structural features and then laser irradiated to analyze the resulting carbon material. Typical laser-induced carbon formed from PFA is more akin to glassy carbon, though varied lasing parameters and structures can potentially enable graphenization. Three series of PFA were prepared which exhibit varying degrees of polymerization, extents of ring opening, and high thermal stability. The PFA chemistry had a notable influence on the quality of the resulting laser-induced carbon, which demonstrated a broad range of ordering from an amorphous structure to that with more crystalline graphitic domains. Correlations between the PFA structure and laser-induced carbon quality showed that the most ordered carbon material formed when the PFA crosslinking was minimal and had high thermal resistance. Further structural engineering of the PFA with these properties may then enable laser-induced graphenization of the precursor.