Chemical stability

The synthesis of SCNs has almost been exclusively performed in a UHV environment, where the reaction processes occur on clean catalytic metal surfaces. Not much is known about the stability of these fascinating materials under ambient conditions, which is of crucial importance in view of their potential in technological applications.  A common critical questioning of the synthesis of nanomaterials under UHV conditions is related to the non-realistic conditions undesired for technological purposes. Surprisingly, the exposure of a very broad number of successfully synthetized nanomaterials to air, or gases that mimic realistic ambient conditions is vastly uncharted. Therefore, such experiments will allow to heavily increase the knowledge of the stability/reactivity of carbon-based nanomaterials under realistic conditions.