International Journal of Advanced Materials Research Vol. 2, No. 5, 2016, pp. 86-91 http://www.aiscience.org/journal/ijamr ISSN: 2381-6805 (Print); ISSN: 2381-6813 (Online) * Corresponding author E-mail address: abdulf330@gmail.com (A. D. Faisal), ajubouri1@yahoo.com (A. A. Aljubouri) Synthesis and Production of Carbon Nanospheres Using Noncatalytic CVD Method Abdulqader D. Faisal * , Ali A. Aljubouri Applied Science Department, Applied Science Research Unit, University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq Abstract Carbon nanospheres were successfully synthesized via noncatalytic chemical vapor deposition method. The product was synthesized from C 2 H 2 as a precursor and N 2 as a carrier gas at 650ºC for 1h using quartz tube inserted into a tube furnace. Two approaches of carbon nanospheres (CNSs) growth were demonstrated. The product revealed fluffy, spongy, black, and light weight carbon spheres (CSs) with regular shapes of 100-200 nm in diameter were investigated. Carbon spheres (CSs) were also grown on silicon (100). The carbon products were characterized by X-Ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, Scanning electron microscope (SEM), Transmission electron microscope (TEM) and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. The XRD results are confirmed by Raman analysis which reflects the presence of amorphous carbon within the structure. The very small crystallite size was calculated using Scherer’s formula compared with previous results which reflect the small number of atoms per lamellae and large interlayer spacing. The CNS's energy gap was calculated for a thin film of carbon powder and the value was 3.65eV. Keywords Carbon Nanosphere, Non-catalytic CVD, Beads and Necklace –like Carbon Structures, Raman Spectroscopy, CNS's Energy Gap Received: June 29, 2016 / Accepted: July 20, 2016 / Published online: August 16, 2016 @ 2016 The Authors. Published by American Institute of Science. This Open Access article is under the CC BY license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ 1. Introduction Synthesis of spherical carbon particles has attracted the attention of many investigators, owing to their potential applications in many fields such as anode materials in secondary lithium ion batteries [1], methanol fuel cells [2], drug delivery [3], adsorbents [4, 5], catalyst supports [6, 7], supercapacitors [8], and so on. There are various techniques used to synthesize carbon nanosphere particles. Some of these include chemical vapor deposition (CVD) [9], template method [10], pyrolysis of carbon sources [11], hydrothermal method [12, 13], sol-gel emulsification [14, 15], etc. Chemical vapor deposition method can take place in the vacuum or atmospheric pressure. It is one of the most promising methods for production of carbon spheres, due to simplicity, low cost, its capability of growing carbon spheres directly on a desired substrate, and the wide range of carbon sources, including; ethylene [16], propylene [17, 18], acetylene [19], xylene [20], and so on. Carbon spheres refer to the spherical form of carbon that can be classified into semicrystalline or crystalline. Carbon spheres can also be categorized as a solid, hollow or core-shell sphere. According to their diameters, there are three distinguished kinds of carbon spheres: wall graphitized sphere (2nm-20nm), less graphitized spheres (50nm-1000nm), and carbon beads (>1000nm) [21]. Since the discovery of buckminsterfullerene's, spherical carbon structures have been receiving increased attention from the scientific community [22]. A classification of these spherical carbon structures has been recently proposed by Inagaki, according to their nanometric texture: concentric, radial or random arrangement of the carbon layers [23].