Luminescence from β-irradiated graphene layers

Abstract

We found that β-irradiated samples of crystallite graphite and multi-walled carbon nanotubes emit light during heating above room temperature. This behaviour is rather surprising for semimetals. Due to the lack of deep enough energy gap, this optical emission cannot be associated with interband transitions, as it is usually assumed in a thermally stimulated luminescence model. We suppose that the reported accumulated luminescence is the result of thermally stimulated relaxation of some kind of defects created in graphene structures by ionising radiation and therefore we offer to name it the relaxoluminescence. We anticipate the relaxoluminescence to be a starting point for developing a new spectroscopic method for nanotechnology. It can also throw a new light on the nature of defects, which are suspected of being responsible for strange magnetic effects in carbon.