AMITY INSTITUTE OF BIOTECHNOLOGY

CARBON BASED MATERIALS

Presented by-
Annant Sharma
Rohit Yadav
Bhaskar Chandra Bhatt
Vinay Sharma
Mohd. Ashif Azad
Tejaswa Saxena
1
 INTRODUCTION
• Carbon-Based materials have captured broad interest in the materials science community for decades.

• Carbon is an extremely light and versatile material that, depending on the local bonding of the constituting
carbon atoms, has hugely varying properties.

• Carbon-based materials have outstanding physical, chemical, thermal, and electric properties.

• Well-known classic examples of carbon allotropes are diamond, amorphous carbon and graphite.
More recently discovered allotropes are buckminsterfullerene's or buckyballs, carbon nanotubes and of
course graphene.

• Various carbon derivatives have been explored as beneficial materials to construct a biocompatible scaffold to
promote neural tissue regeneration and repairing.

2
• Some Carbon Based materials are:-

Carbon-Based Materials

Carbon Graphene
Nanotubes Graphene nanoparticles
Quantum Dots

Carbon Graphene
Nanofibers Nanoribbons

3
 CARBON NANOTUBES
• Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are cylindrical molecules that consist of rolled-up sheets of single-layer carbon atoms
(graphene).

• They can be single-walled (SWCNT) with a diameter of less than 1 nanometer (nm) or multi-walled (MWCNT),
consisting of several concentrically interlinked nanotubes, with diameters reaching more than 100 nm. Their
length can reach several micrometers or even millimeters.

• Carbon nanotubes can exhibit remarkable electrical conductivity, while others are semiconductors. They also
have exceptional tensilestrength and thermalconductivity because of their nanostructure and strength of the
bonds between carbon atoms. In addition, they can be chemically modified.

• These properties are expected to be valuable in many areas of technology, such as electronics, optics, 
composite materials (replacing or complementing carbon fibers), nanotechnology, and other applications of 
materials science.

4
 APPLICATIONS
• Current use and application of nanotubes has mostly
been limited to the use of bulk nanotubes, which is a
mass of rather unorganized fragments of nanotubes.
Bulk nanotube materials may never achieve a tensile
strength similar to that of individual tubes, but such
composites may, nevertheless, yield strengths sufficient
for many applications. Bulk carbon nanotubes have
already been used as composite fibers in polymers to
improve the mechanical, thermal and electrical
properties of the bulk product.

5
 CARBON NANOFIBERS
• Carbon nanofibers (CNFs), vapor grown carbon fibres (VGCFs), or vapor grown carbon nanofibers (VGCNFs)
are cylindrical nanostructures with graphene layers arranged as stacked cones, cups or plates.

• Carbon nanofibers with graphene layers wrapped into perfect cylinders are called carbon nanotubes.

• CNFs, which are notable for their thermal, electrical, electromagnetic shielding, and mechanical property
enhancements. As carbon is readily available at low cost, CNFs are popular additives to composite materials
. CNFs are very small, existing at the nanometer scale. An atom is between.1-.5 nm, thus specialized 
microscopic techniques such as Scanning Tunneling Microscopy and Atomic Force Microscopy are required to
examine the properties of CNFs.

6
 APPLICATIONS
• Researchers are using nanofibers to deliver therapeutic drugs.
They have developed an elastic material that is embedded with
needle like carbon nanofibers. The material is intended to be used
as balloons which are inserted next diseased tissue, and then
inflated. When the balloon is inflated the carbon, nanofibers
penetrate diseased cells and delivery therapeutic drugs.
Researchers at MIT have used carbon nanofibers to make lithium
ion battery electrodes that show four times the storage capacity of
current lithium ion batteries. Researchers are using nanofibers to
make sensors that change color as they absorb chemical vapors.
They plan to use these sensors to show when the absorbing
material in a gas mask becomes saturated.

7
 GRAPHENE QUANTUM DOTS
• Graphene quantum dots (GQDs) consist of one or a few layers of graphene and are smaller than 100 nm in
size. They are chemically and physically stable, have a large surface to mass ratio and can be dispersed in
water easily due to functional groups at the edges.

• The fluorescence emission of GQDs can extend across a broad spectral range, including the UV, visible, and
IR. The origin of GQD fluorescence emission is a subject of debate, as it has been related to quantum
confinement effects, defect states and functional groups that might depend on the pH, when GQDs are
dispersed in water.

• The toxicity of graphene-family nanoparticles is a matter of ongoing research. The toxicity (both in vivo and
cytotoxicity) of GQDs are related to a variety of factors including particle size, methods of synthesis, chemical
doping and so on.

• That GQDs are biocompatible and cause only low toxicity as they are just composed of organic materials, which
should lead to an advantage over semiconductor quantum dots.
8
 APPLICATIONS
1. Graphene quantum dots are studied as an advanced multifunctional material
due to their unique optical, electronic,  spin, and photoelectric properties
induced by the quantum confinement effect and edge effect.

2. They have possible applications in treatment of Alzheimer's

disease, bioimaging, cancer therapeutics, temperature sensing, drug delivery,
LEDs lighter converters, photodetectors, OPV solar cells, and
photoluminescent material, biosensors fabrication.

9
 GRAPHENE NANORIBBIONS
• Graphene nanoribbons (GNRs, also called nano-graphene ribbons or nano-graphite ribbons) are strips of 
graphene with width less than 100 nm. Graphene ribbons were introduced as a theoretical model by 
Mitsutaka Fujita and co-authors to examine the edge and nanoscale size effect in graphene.

• Large quantities of width-controlled GNRs can be produced via graphite nanotomy,where applying a sharp

diamond knife on graphite produces graphite nanoblocks, which can then be exfoliated to produce GNRs.

• GNRs were grown on the edges of three-dimensional structures etched into silicon carbide wafers.

• The mechanical properties of the two most common graphene nanoribbons (zigzag and armchair) were
investigated by computational modeling using density functional theory, molecular dynamics, and 
finite element method. Since the two-dimensional graphene sheet with strong bonding is known to be one of the
stiffest materials, graphene nanoribbons Young's modulus also has a value of over 1 TPa.

10
 APPLICATIONS
Polymeric nanocomposites-
Graphene nanoribbons and their oxidized counterparts called graphene oxide nanoribbons
have been investigated as nano-fillers to improve the mechanical properties of polymeric
nanocomposites. Increases in the mechanical properties of epoxy composites on loading of
graphene nanoribbons were observed. An increase in the mechanical properties of
biodegradable polymeric nanocomposites of poly(propylene fumarate) at low weight
percentage was achieved by loading of oxidized graphene nanoribbons, fabricated for bone
tissue engineering applications.
Contrast agent for bioimaging-
Hybrid imaging modalities, such as photoacoustic (PA) tomography (PAT) and 
thermoacoustic (TA) tomography (TAT) have been developed for bioimaging applications.
PAT/TAT combines advantages of pure ultrasound and pure optical imaging/radio frequency
 (RF), providing good spatial resolution, great penetration depth and high soft-tissue
contrast. GNR synthesized by unzipping single- and multi-walled carbon nanotubes have
been reported as contrast agents for photoacoustic and thermoacoustic imaging and 
tomography.
11
 GRAPHENE NANOPARTICLES
• Graphene is a unique nanomaterial compared with other spherical or one-dimensional nanoparticles due to its
two-dimensional structure with sp2-carbons.

• Each atom in a graphene sheet is connected to its three nearest neighbors by a strong σ-bond, and contributes
to a valence band one electron that extends over the whole sheet. This is the same type of bonding seen in 
carbon nanotubes and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and (partially) in fullerenes and glassy carbon. The
valence band is touched by a conduction band, making graphene a semimetal with unusual 
electronic properties that are best described by theories for massless relativistic particles.

• Graphene has become a valuable and useful nanomaterial due to its exceptionally high tensile strength,
electrical conductivity, transparency, and being the thinnest two-dimensional material in the world.

• The material strongly absorbs light of all visible wavelengths, which accounts for the black color of graphite; yet
a single graphene sheet is nearly transparent because of its extreme thinness. The material is about 100 times
as strong as would be the strongest steel of the same thickness.

12
 APPLICATIONS
• Graphene Nanoparticles is a transparent and flexible conductor
that holds great promise for various material/device applications,
including solar cells light-emitting diodes (LED), integrated
photonic circuit devices, touch panels, and smart windows or
phones. Smartphone products with graphene touch screens are
already on the market.
• Graphene Nanoparticles is often produced as a powder and as a
dispersion in a polymer matrix. This dispersion is supposedly
suitable for advanced composites, paints and coatings, lubricants,
oils and functional fluids, capacitors and batteries, thermal
management applications, display materials and packaging, solar
cells, inks and 3D-printers' materials, and barriers and films.

13