Paramagnetic muon states in mesoporous carbon materials

We present results of longitudinal field repolarisation measurements carried out at J-PARC and ISIS on the "green" functional carbon materials Starbon 300 and Starbon 800, synthesized using starch as a template and subjected to pyrolysis treatments at different temperatures (300°C and 800°C respectively); pyrolysis at low temperature may be expected to yield a material retaining more of the "hydrophilic" properties of the original starch material in its chemically active voids, while high temperature pyrolysis may be expected to lead to "hydrophobic" voids and a more graphitic material. The hydrophilic material shows a larger repolarising fraction than the hydrophobic material, with a hyperfine constant on the order of 200-300 MHz. This is likely to be a superposition of the repolarisation of multiple radicals. Several candidate and model species are investigated through accompanying density functional theory calculations.