Carbon-Based Nanomaterials: Carbon Nanotube, Fullerene, and Carbon Dots

Abstract

Carbon nanomaterials are special materials with remarkable properties which have high potential to use in material science. Carbon nanomaterials are the most explored ones as their different isotopes have interestingly unique proper-ties. Carbon nanomaterials include carbon nanotubes (CNTs), fullerene, carbon dots (CDs), graphene, etc., which vary in their dimensionality and characteristic prop-erties. This chapter describes the most common synthesis routes for these carbon nanomaterials. The synthesis process has a substantial influence on defining the properties of carbon nanomaterials materials. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD), arc discharge, laser ablation, microwave-assisted, pyrolysis, and some other chem-ical methods have been generally used for synthesizing carbon nanomaterials. A detail of each method has been summarized along with its merits and demerits. Properties of a material defined its application area as CNTs are prominently used in electronic area, whereas CDs are popular for optical applications. Here, a brief description is given on the prime characteristics of CNTs, CDs, and fullerenes. Also, some published reports and their salient outcomes have been discussed for few fields like energy storage, biomedical, and sensing applications.