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Carbon nanomaterials

From rods to sheets in a flash

Nature Chemistry volume 6, pages 463–464 (2014)Cite this article

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The controlled synthesis of two-dimensional carbon nanomaterials enables their properties to be tailored for potential device applications. Functionalized graphene-like nanosheets with controlled thickness have now been obtained by irradiating monolayers of carbon-rich molecular precursors at room temperature.

The synthesis of carbon nanomaterials such as nanotubes, nanosheets and nanoribbons has been the subject of intense research over the past twenty years. Traditionally, these materials have been prepared by heating simple carbon sources to high temperatures under very specific conditions. Although these 'physical' methods can produce relatively large quantities of material, fine control over the size, shape and properties of the resulting products is difficult. A more recent 'hybrid' approach uses physical stimuli to initiate the chemical transformation of self-assembled metastable precursors into zero- and one-dimensional carbon nanomaterials with controlled structural parameters1. Despite the potential of these methods for making two-dimensional carbon nanomaterials with controlled features, no significant advances have been made in this area until now.

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Figure 1: A self-assembled monolayer of hexayne amphiphiles forms 2D carbon nanosheets upon UV irradiation2.

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  1. Jean-François Morin is in the Department of Chemistry, Université Laval, 1045 Ave de la Médecine, Pavillon Alexandre-Vachon, local 1250B, Québec G1V 0A6, Canada,

    Jean-François Morin

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  1. Jean-François Morin
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Correspondence to Jean-François Morin.

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Morin, JF. From rods to sheets in a flash. Nature Chem 6, 463–464 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.1962

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