Carbon black itself is nonconductive to my knowledge, however, graphitic carbon is conductive.

Dear Deepak Sridhar,

Sorry, but you are not correct in the terms you currently use. Both activated carbon and carbon black are not well-ordered, but not amorphous; they have low conductivities, but there is no reason to call them non-conductive. Please, see Chapter 2 - Carbon in Volume 1 of my book on UHTM available on my ResearchGate account.

Dear Igor,

maybe you are right regarding nonconductive, but in the abstract it is mentioned that beside others carbon (graphene/graphite) C is considered, i.e. materials with the typical sheet structure.

@Titus Sobisch  Dr. Sobisch. Sorry, I should have framed my question with Conductive C black  instead. These are often used as a conductive additive to rubber reinforcement, supercapacitor electrodes etc. For ex, 

http://www.cabotcorp.com/solutions/products-plus/carbon-blacks-for-elastomer-reinforcement/conductive

So why is this conductive?

Thanks

@Igor L Shabalin  Dr. Shabalin, I went through your book, and I understood that activated carbon is nanoporous assemblies of defective graphene and Cblack is partly crystallised OR AMORPHOUS spherical particulates?! So they would have mixture of SP2 and SP3? How will the C assembly look like in AC and C black?

Also, is conductive black different than just C black?

@M. Farooq Wahab. Hi Farooq, perfect! I see this problem in the same manner. When you look into AC Raman, you will still have G band, which is again depicting som conductivity. But this conductivity is less than CBlack conductivity.

So, to classify Carbon allotrope as crystalline, should the D peak intensity be high (No inplane vibration?- I am not a physicist, so might be sounding funny?)? Please explain

Thanks

Dear Deepak Sridhar,

 it not the magnitude of conductivity, to my knowledge, the major difference for their implementation (in most applications), but the magnitude of (active) surface as well as their important difference in (meso, nano-scopic level) mechanical properties.

Titus Sobisch: Please see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267331006_Carbon_GrapheneGraphite

Chapter Carbon (Graphene/Graphite)

Dear Dr. Samaras,

How is the mechanical property aiding conductivity? 

regards

Dear Deepak Sridhar,  [Q: "How is the mechanical property aiding conductivity? "]

the magnitude of (active) surface is obvious, about why conductivity is aided, by the definition of conductivity. The mechanical property may be less obvious. However, if you consider the advantages of an elastic filler in applications (dental etc.) then you will draw a concept-picture. On the contrary, a non elastic filler is loosing "bonds" between neighbor clusters, that is sometimes critical [see PS] upon high volume changes due a driving force stress (electric, chemical, temperature, magnetic  etc.). Also, in composite "ceramic" electrodes (as one of the examples) some add Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, i.e. teflon) powder to enhance elasticity, further.

PS:

1.  wikipedia:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_exponent,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_graph

2. Diffusion and Reactions in Fractals and Disordered Systems [http://havlin.biu.ac.il/Shlomo%20Havlin%20books_d_r.php]

Dear Deepak Sridhar,

As an author of reference book I cannot ignore the opinions or terms used by the earlier authors of original/initial publications/references. That is why I wrote "...or amorphous..." there... However, I believe that the term "amorphous" is not appropriate to describe the structure of "sigma-sp2