Soot nanostructure evolution in premixed flames by High Resolution Electron Transmission Microscopy (HRTEM)

The distributions of carbon in differently-sized aromatic structures were evaluated on the basis of the fringe length distribution to follow the aromatic growth. The method assigned aromatic sizes to the extracted HRTEM fringes, assuming that the fringes are in the shape of parallelograms. The distributions were found to evolve toward larger size aromatic systems demonstrating the occurrence of aromatic growth during soot formation.