Design, Synthesis and Applications of Functional Carbonaceous

Carbon nanoparticles have gained considerable attention due to their distinguishing features including hydrophobic, conducting and thermostable properties. Other features include the fine control over the ductile properties, porosity, and surface area of the nanoparticles. These features allow the nanoparticles to be designed for applications in drug and vaccine delivery, nanoreactors for catalytic reactions, electrode material for energy storage and conversion. With the advance in new synthetic techniques, carbon nanoparticles can now be designed with control over the particles morphology, which include microporous, mesoporous, hollow, core-shell and yolk-shell structures. However, due to the inert nature of carbon, there remains a great challenge to prepare carbon nanoparticles not only with a desired morphology and porosity, but with desired functionality. Accomplishing this will provide a powerful synthetic methodology to prepare the next generation of carbon nanoparticles, improving on the many known applications and possibly generate new technologies. This thesis aims to develop highly effective and facile methods to prepare carbon nanoparticles with not only controlled morphology and porosity, but producing composite nanoparticles (e.g. heteroatom-doping and metal nanoparticle inclusion) and greater surface functionality. The additional features have provided the design capability to develop better supercapacitors and nanocatalysts. The first aspect discussed in this thesis is the development of monodispers