ИСТИНА

Nanocarbon materials attract attention due to various unique properties that distinguish them from bulky graphite and diamond. The fundamental reason for this difference consists in atomic orbitals modifications occurring during formation of the condensed carbons. In nanostructured materials significant amount of atoms are situated at surface that distort their atomic bonding from that in an ‘ideal’ 3D arrangement. Moreover isolated atomic layers of graphene represent essentially ‘nanostructured’ material which does not exist in ‘bulky’ form. Additionally to that numerous nanocarbon structures are formed from curved and bended graphene sheets. The ‘family’ of graphenic carbons includes fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, nanocones and other forms possessing wide variation of their properties due to distortion of their atomic bonding from that in an ‘ideal’ flat 2D graphene. Controllable condensation and formation of desirable carbon nanostructures is performed usually in chemical vapor deposition (CVD) processes where solid carbons occurred due to chemical reactions in an activated gaseous environment containing carbonaceous precursors. The activation by a direct current (DC) gas discharge has been realized in our work. Possessing more or less general features the DC-PLASMA CVD demonstrates some specificities leading to formation carbon structures with very different characteristics. Among them are mesoporous nanographite films composed of tiny graphite flakes having bended graphene structures on their edges, carbon nanosrolls represented by twisted polygonal structures formed of spirally scrolled graphene, diamond crystallites of pyramidal or plate-like shapes etc. The structural diversity of the nanocarbons leads to variation of their properties in a wide range and to attractiveness of these materials for very different applications. In our work we have demonstrated very high abilities of nanocarbons for applications in vacuum electronics (as cold cathodes), electrochemistry (as porous electrode materials), optoelectronics (as photovoltaic element), electromechanical systems (diamond tips). The prospective applications include also diamond optical sensors and qubits, single point electron emitters and other applications.