For long, the elemental Carbon had been considered to have only four allotropes: diamond, graphite, amorphous carbon and carbyne. Twenty-five years on from the discovery of C60, the development of sp2-hybridized carbons have renewed our knowledge about Carbon by continuously presenting three new allotropes: zero-dimensional C60 of perfect symmetry (fullerene, 1985), the smallest one-dimensional material (carbon nanotube, 1991) and the thinnest two-dimensional material (graphene, 2004). More importantly, these novel carbons have demonstrated many intriguing and unexpected properties and promoted the development of nanomaterials and nanotechnology. Since the rediscovery and rise of graphene in 2004, such a thin sheet-like carbon has demonstrated excellent electrical, optical, thermal, mechanical, chemical and electrochemical properties and shown great potentials in many application areas such as nanoelectronics, energy storage, membrane devices and composite materials. In 2010, only six years after the mechanically-cleaved graphene was reported to be of intriguing electrical properties by Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, the two scientists was awarded Nobel Prize in Phy~sics.
This special issue reports the latest research advances of graphene and other novel carbon nanostructures, including 2 Highlights (short review), 1 Review, 11 research articles. The two Highlights give comments on the discovery, development trend and energy storage application of graphene; the Review presents an overview of chemical vapor deposition method to prepare high quality graphene; the 8 research papers report the latest results of graphene research with several “hot” topics: preparation and characterization, assembly, modification and applications; the other 3 research papers involve in latest applications of other novel carbon nanostructures, including field emission property of carbon nanotubes with a sharp tip, adsorption of heave metal ions by nanotubes and photocatalytic properties of carbon coated titania. Many scientific comments have predicted that the discovery of new carbon allotropes does not come to an end after the discovery of fullerene, the synthesis of carbon nanotubes and the rediscovery of graphene. Scientists are continuing to unfold the exciting carbon family, and for example, graphane and graphdiyne are the most recently synthesized novel carbons. There will be a long way for us to fully understand the properties and realize the large-scale applications of these novel carbons, so continuous efforts by scientists and engineers are highly required to explore the exciting Carbon…
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