If graphene is ever going to live up to the promises of future nanoelectronic devices, an easy and cheap route for mass production is an essential requirement. A way to extend the capabilities of plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition to the synthesis of freestanding few-layer graphene is presented. Micrometre-wide flakes consisting of four to six atomic layers of stacked graphene sheets have been synthesized by controlled recombination of carbon radicals in a microwave plasma. A simple and highly reproducible technique is essential, since the resulting flakes can be synthesized without the need for a catalyst on the surface of any substrate that withstands elevated temperatures up to 700• C. A thorough structural analysis of the flakes is performed with electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy and scanning tunnelling microscopy. The resulting graphene flakes are aligned vertically to the substrate surface and grow according to a three-step process, as revealed by the combined analysis of electron microscopy and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.

The electric field emission behavior of vertically aligned few-layer graphene was studied in a parallel plate–type setup. Few-layer graphene was synthesized in the absence of any metallic catalyst by microwave plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition with gas mixtures of methane and hydrogen. The deposit consists of nanostructures that are several micrometers wide, highly crystalline stacks of four to six atomic layers of graphene, aligned vertically to the substrate surface in a high density network. The few-layer graphene is found to be a good field emitter, characterized by turn-on fields as low as 1 V/μm and field amplification factors up to several thousands. We observe a clear dependence of the few-layer graphene field emission behavior on the synthesis parameters: Hydrogen is identified as an efficient etchant to improve field emission, and samples grown on titanium show lower turn-on field values and higher amplification factors when compared to samples grown on silicon.

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Sulfur particles with a conductive polymer coating of poly(3,4ethylene dioxythiophene) "PEDOT" were prepared by dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma technology under atmospheric conditions (low temperature, ambient pressure). We report a solvent-free, low-cost, low-energyconsumption, safe, and low-risk process to make the material development and production compatible for sustainable technologies. Different coating protocols were developed to produce PEDOT-coated sulfur powders with electrical conductivity in the range of 10 −8 −10 −5 S/cm. The raw sulfur powder (used as the reference) and (low-, optimum-, high-) PEDOT-coated sulfur powders were used to assemble lithium−sulfur (Li−S) cells with a high sulfur loading of ∼4.5 mg/cm 2 . Long-term galvanostatic cycling at C/10 for 100 cycles showed that the capacity fade was mitigated by ∼30% for the cells containing the optimum-PEDOT-coated sulfur in comparison to the reference Li−S cells with raw sulfur. Rate capability, cyclic voltammetry, and electrochemical impedance analyzes confirmed the improved behavior of the PEDOT-coated sulfur as an active material for lithium−sulfur batteries. The Li−S cells containing optimum-PEDOT-coated sulfur showed the highest reproducibility of their electrochemical properties. A wide variety of bulk and surface characterization methods including conductivity analysis, X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and NMR spectroscopy were used to explain the chemical features and the superior behavior of Li−S cells using the optimum-PEDOT-coated sulfur material. Moreover, postmortem [SEM and Brunauer−Emmett−Teller (BET)] analyzes of uncoated and coated samples allowed us to exclude any significant effect at the electrode scale even after 70 cycles.

Lignocellulose represents a potential supply of sustainable feedstock for the production of biofuels and chemicals. There is, however, an important cost and efficiency challenge associated with the conversion of such lignocellulosics. Because its structure is complex and not prone to undergo chemical reactions very easily, chemical and mechanical pretreatments are usually necessary to be able to refine them into the compositional building blocks (carbohydrates and lignin) from which value-added platform molecules, such as glucose, ethylene glycol, 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, and levulinic acid, and biofuels, such as bioderived naphtha, kerosene, and diesel fractions, will be produced. Conventional (wet) methods are usually polluting, aggressive, and highly energy consuming, so any alternative activation procedure of the lignocellulose is highly recommended and anticipated in recent and future biomass research. Lignocellulosic plasma activation has emerged as an interesting (dry) treatment technique. In the long run, in particular, in times of fairly accessible renewable electricity, plasma may be considered as an alternative to conventional pretreatment methods, but current knowledge is too little and examples too few to guarantee that statement. This review therefore highlights recent knowledge, advancements, and shortcomings in the field of plasma treatment of cellulose and lignocellulose with regard to the (structural and chemical) effects and impact on the future of pretreatment methods.