Oxidation of Carbon: What We Know and What We Still Need to Know

It is astonishing that despite the very long time research on coal, on the one side, and the more recent but massive research carried out on graphene on the other, there are still many unresolved (or poorly understood) aspects in the heterogeneous oxidation of carbons: : what are the bonding modes of oxygen on different solid carbons? What is the range of atomic equilibrium distance? What are the spin state of the absorbing site and of the absorption complexes? What is the energetic range of C-O bond? Is it a strong physisorption or a weak chemisorption? What are the kinetics of the absorption and desorption on the molecular scale?