Feng Ding

The periodic makeup of carbon nanotubes suggests that their formation should obey the principles established for crystals. Nevertheless, this important connection remained elusive for decades and no theoretical regularities in the rates and product type distribution have been found. Here we contend that any nanotube can be viewed as having a screw dislocation along the axis. Consequently, its growth rate is shown to be proportional to the Burgers vector of such dislocation and therefore to the c

Density functional theory is used to show that the adhesion between single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) and the catalyst particles from which they grow needs to be strong to support nanotube growth. It is found that Fe, Co, and Ni, commonly used to catalyze SWNT growth, have larger adhesion strengths to SWNTs than Cu, Pd, and Au and are therefore likely to be more efficient for supporting growth. The calculations also show that to maintain an open end of the SWNT it is necessary that the SWNT

Molecular dynamics simulations based on an empirical potential energy surface were used to study iron catalyzed nucleation and growth of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). The simulations show that SWNTs grow from iron-carbide particles at temperatures between 800 and 1400 K, whereas graphene sheets encapsulate the particle at temperatures below 600 K and a three-dimensional soot-like structure is formed above 1600 K. Nucleation of these carbon (C) structures can be divided into three stage

Graphene, the thinnest two-dimensional material in nature, has abundant distinctive properties, such as ultrahigh carrier mobility, superior thermal conductivity, very high surface-to-volume ratio, anomalous quantum Hall effect, and so on. Laterally confined, thin, and long strips of graphene, namely, graphene nanoribbons (GNRs), can open the bandgap in the semimetal and give it the potential to replace silicon in future electronics. Great efforts are devoted to achieving high-quality GNRs with

The successful exfoliation of graphene has given a tremendous boost to research on various two-dimensional (2D) materials in the last 15 years. Different from traditional thin films, a 2D material is composed of one to a few atomic layers. While atoms within a layer are chemically bonded, interactions between layers are generally weak van der Waals (vdW) interactions. Due to their particular dimensionality, 2D materials exhibit special electronic, magnetic, mechanical, and thermal properties, no

The molecular dynamics method, based on an empirical potential energy surface, was used to study the effect of catalyst particle size on the growth mechanism and structure of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs). The temperature for nanotube nucleation (800-1100 K), which occurs on the surface of the cluster, is similar to that used in catalyst chemical vapor deposition experiments, and the growth mechanism, which is described within the vapor-liquid-solid model, is the same for all cluster si

Metal corrosion is a long-lasting problem in history and ultrahigh anticorrosion is one ultimate pursuit in the metal-related industry. Graphene, in principle, can be a revolutionary material for anticorrosion due to its excellent impermeability to any molecule or ion (except for protons). However, in real applications, it is found that the metallic graphene forms an electrochemical circuit with the protected metals to accelerate the corrosion once the corrosive fluids leaks into the interface.

During the last 10 years, remarkable achievements on the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) growth of 2D materials have been made, but the understanding of the underlying mechanisms is still relatively limited. Here, the current progress on the understanding of the growth kinetics of 2D materials, especially for their CVD synthesis, is reviewed. In order to present a complete picture of 2D materials' growth kinetics, the following factors are discussed: i) two types of growth modes, namely attachme