Unsighted Cite: The first graphite intercalation compound was not discovered by Schafhaeutl
2009 August 18
In the spirit of my previous post, Unsighted Cite: Highly Cited Paper which was never written, I would like to explore how citation errors have manipulated our understanding about discovery of graphite intercalation compound (GIC) and exfoliated graphites? Despite the fact Schafhaeutl, a German scientist, did not discover the very first GIC, graphite bisulfate, majority of publications dealing with GICs managed to claim that, by citing his 1840 paper published in Journal fur praktische Chemie. What Schafhaeutl discovered was the exfoliated graphite. In reality Schafhaeutl published his ground breaking work “On the combinations of carbon with silicon and iron, and other metals, forming the different species of cast iron, steel, and malleable iron” in The London and Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science in year 1840. Later this article was translated word-for-word into German. Interestingly the German Scientists were the first to realize the potential of Schafhaeutl’s publications and hence they only referred to the German version which was published after few months in Journal fur praktische Chemie. In 1865 citation for the German version appeared first time in an article published by Gottschalk and according to citation history since then all authors cited only the German publication. In his citation Gottschalk writes ‘‘dies. Journ. 21, 153’’, and in German version at page 153 exfoliation of graphite is described. So how it ended to discovery of GICs? Hanns-Peter Boehm and Eberhard Stumpp suggest that
In retrospect and with our present knowledge we can conclude that in the procedure performed by Schafhaeutl the intercalation of sulfuric acid in graphite was a transition state. However, at that time the experimental methods for exploring the mechanism of solid state reactions did not exist. The observation of a reaction or a color change may be the beginning of the discovery of a chemical substance, but something cannot be considered as ‘‘discovered’’ unless it is recognized for what it really is
And
it was the discovery of graphite oxide by Brodie which formed the starting point for extensive research by a number of scientists to characterize the nature of this material. In the course of these investigations it was recognized that sulfuric acid is intercalated into the graphite lattice in the presence of a strong oxidizing agent.
Reference:
BOEHM, H., & STUMPP, E. (2007). Citation errors concerning the first report on exfoliated graphite Carbon, 45 (7), 1381-1383 DOI: 10.1016/j.carbon.2006.12.016
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Unsighted Cite: The first graphite intercalation compound was not discovered by Schafhaeutl: In the spirit of my.. http://bit.ly/1aeYs
Unsighted Cite: The first graphite intercalation compound was not discovered by Schafhaeutl http://bit.ly/1aeYs
Unsighted Cite: The first graphite intercalation compound was not discovered by Schafhaeutl http://bit.ly/1aeYs