Chapter 5
Carbon Nanostructures
‘God runs electromagnetics by wave theory on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and the Devil runs them by quantum theory on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.’
Sir William Bragg
5.1 Nanoforms of Carbon
Due to the unique ability to form chemical bonds with various s + p hybridization manifolds carbon offers the greatest versatility for useful structures. The four valence electrons of carbon can form sp, sp2 and sp3 bond configurations. This predetermines the ability of carbon atoms to form various linear, planar and three-dimensional structures. All these structures may be classified into three categories: diamontoids (with mainly sp3 hybrids), graphenes, fullerenes and related structures (with sp2 hybrids dominating) and polyyne and cumulene chains (with sp hybrids) [1–6]. The most promising properties from an infochemical point of view are represented by compounds which belong to the second group. Along with different forms of carbon (fullerenes, graphene, nanotubes, nanohorns) [2, 3, 7] various hydrocarbons and other compounds are based on the same type of hybridization. These compound families include polycyclic systems of different geometries (benzenoid and non-benzenoid ) and chemical identities (from fully aromatic to fully antiaromatic) [8–10], linear macromolecules [11–15], dendrimers [16, 17] and so on. There is just one common feature of all these species – sp2 hybridization. This makes all these systems suitable for various (nano)electronic ...
