Universidade Federal do Ceará
PRPPG/UFC – Pró-Reitoria de Pesquisa e Pós-Graduação da Universidade Federal do Ceará

Nanocarbon materials have been very atractive to physicists and other material scientists because they are model systems for nanoscience and important building blocks for nanotechnology. The richness of the electronic properties of graphene is a consequence of a unique Fermi surface (Dirac cone) and of its symmetry. This special gapless electronic band structure offers many opportunities for new physics and determines the striking properties of graphene’s  one-dimensional counterparts: nanoribbons and nanotubes.

A new review article on this topic, authored by reasearchers from RPI, MIT and UFC, has been recently published in the prestigious journal Reviews of Modern Physics (http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/RevModPhys.88.025005). A comprehensive analysis of the unique properties of sp2 nanocarbon materials is done by considering the behavior of single layer and few-layer graphene and then extending the analysis to nanoribbons and nanotubes in terms of their reduced dimensionality and curvature.

Structural models for carbon nanotubes (top), graphene nanoribbons (middle) compared to their mother structure graphene (bottom). Credit: Reviews of Modern Physics

This review includes a discussion on some open questions that need to be addressed and possible research directions that can be followed within the field.  Taking into consideration the recent developments in the synthesis, characterization techniques and theoretical modeling of nanocarbons, the authors ponder on the perspectives for the physics of low-dimensional systems and also on their impact on the science beyond that of carbon nanosystems.

The full reference of the paper is:
Physical properties of low-dimensional sp2-based carbon nanostructures
V. Meunier, A. G. Souza Filho, E. B. Barros, and M. S. Dresselhaus
Reviews of Modern Physics 88, 025005 (2016)
DOI: 10.1103/RevModPhys.88.025005