A report on the Carbon2003 conference in Oviedo, Spain

This is a brief report on the Carbon2003 conference held in Oviedo of Spain in the second week of July 2003. More than 400 experts from 38 nations presented 516 contributions of the most recent results of their research on carbon. Similar to previous carbon meetings, a wide range of topica was covered, including Raw Materials and Thermal Treatments, Fibres and Composites, New Carbon Forms, Advanced Structural Characterization, Adsorption and Surface Science, Chemical Reactivity, Intercalation and Catalysis, Energy Storage, Environmental Applications, Other Products/Applications (Biomaterials, etc.). The Carbon2003 conference is especially characterized by introducing a novel debate forum on Hot Topics with the aim of provoking discussion and debate on unresolved questions and highly controversial issues, including magnetic carbon or ferromagnetism in pure carbon, potentiomatric titrations for the characterization of functional groups on carbons, hydrogen storage in SWCNTs, methane storage in microporous carbons and the nature of basic sites on carbon surfaces as well as a novel structure of nongraphitizing carbons, etc. It is believed that this kind of Hot Topic forum should be adopted in all future carbon conferences.