Carbon basics in biomaterials: carbon forms, pyrolytic carbon, and graphite structure

Apuntes

83© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 V. Hasirci, N. Hasirci, Fundamentals of Biomaterials, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-8856-3_6 6 Carbon as a Biomaterial 6.1 General Properties Carbon is an element found abundantly in the Earth’s crust and in the human body. The various bonding capabilities enable it to form so many different varieties of compounds including the many gases, liquids, and solids. The carbon compounds constitute the nutrients, the organic energy sources, the building materials for plants, and many other molecules in the body. Since all living species are hydrocarbon based, carbon basically is the element of life if water is the molecule of life. Carbon- derived compounds like diamond, graphite, and graphene are made of only one element, and the method of their production is different than the commercially available ceramics since the melting temperature of carbon is very high. The carbon-based materials are very diverse; even though they are formed only of carbon, they can be very soft like graphite and very hard like diamond. This dif- ference originates from the chemistry and the organization of carbon atoms; they can be amor...