There is an increasing interest in applications of carbon nanomaterials (CNMs) including carbon nanotubes in a variety of consumer products such as polymer composites. In that perspective quantifying CNMs in products and environmental matrices is essential to assess environmental impact and human toxicity. PTA (programmed thermal analysis) is a reliable quantification method allowing for the differentiation of refractory (elemental) carbon from organic carbon. In complex matrices, the presence of large amounts of organic carbon can cause issues such as the formation of char during the combustion process with similar thermal stability than CNMs. In this study, various approaches were investigated to adapt PTA to complex samples and a novel solvent technique to digest CNM-containing composites was developed to minimize artifact formation due to charring. This protocol provides direct quantification in many type of CNM composites. The resulting method is able to detect as little as 1ug of CNMs in a variety of complex matrices including plastics (polyester, polystyrene) and environmental biomass.

Quantification of carbonaceous nanomaterials in complex matrice

251st National Meeting (2016)

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