Photophysics of Cabon Nanostructures

Abstract : In the last decades, research on graphene has been extensively developed. It is now well established that graphene shows unique physical properties such as extremely high charge-carrier mobility, which promises a wealth of applications in (nano)electronics. However, graphene does not have a bandgap. Therefore, one challenge for scientists is the control and modification of the electronic porperties in order to open a sizable bandgap. In this context nanosized graphene have a lot of assets. The reduction of one dimension of graphene leads to carbon nanotubes (CNT) or graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) while the reduction of the two dimensions leads to graphene quantum dots (GQDs). The size reduction, the topology and the shape of the edges define the electronic and optical properties of this family of objects. In this presentation, I will show our last results on the photophysics of such nanostructures investigated at the single object level.