Controlling the shapes and assemblages of graphene

摘要

Carbon, a vital element in our daily lives, is still fascinating us at the nanoscale. In PNAS, Geng et al. (1) manage to synthesize ordered arrays of atom-thick hexagonal microplatelets consisting of sp2 hybridized carbon. Since the discovery of C_(60) (Buckminsterfullerene; an icosahedral carbon cage molecules with diameter of approximately.0.7 nm) (2), carbon nano-science emerged, and it was witnessed that nanoscale carbon materials possessed different physicochemical properties compared with the well known bulk allotropes of carbon: graphite and diamond. During the past 20 y, other novel carbon materials have been synthesized and intensively studied: carbon nanotubes (3-5) and graphene (6, 7).