Carbon nanotubes are cousins of graphite, diamond, and fullerene C-60. The chemistry of these tubular structures has been more or less established, since their discovery and more intensely over the past decade, mostly according to the existing knowledge of those other carbon allotropes. Among the chemistries being explored, those rendering the nanotubes soluble were of special interest, since they opened up a whole new playground to process these materials and to maximize their magic properties for applications.Carbon nanotubes may be viewed as rolling up of single pieces of graphenes. To physicists, the tubular structure itself is interesting; moreover, the "opened" ones - the "nanostrips" - also become intriguing. So what are the nature of these carbon nanostrips? This does not need the talent of Einstein's to answer. Carbon nanostrips, so to speak, are just pieces of graphene.
Since graphite (millions of layers of graphene) is a long-time acquaintance to us, the "re-discovery" of the material brings us new perspective to re-look into the chemistry of graphene: Can we make soluble carbon nanostrips/nanosheets/nanoplatets? What will the composites behave if we incorporate single graphene nanosheets? How do the sizes of nanosheets matter? What could be the applications which currently somewhat rely on the uncertain hype of carbon nanotubes?
Fortunately, for chemists, the graphite chemistry has more or less established, so does the carbon nanotube chemistry. The graphene chemistry is thus taking its initial warm-up, with publications addressing fundenmental chemistries/composite properties already emerged. In the following years, we shall witness enormous development in this exciting new field of nanoscience and science as a whole, just like we did in the carbon nanotube chemistry.
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IMAGE COURTESY:
http://www.msm.cam.ac.uk/phase-trans/2005/SWpaper/index.html
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