Supercarbon

The information revolution of the twentieth century was brought about by microelectronics based on a simple and common material, silicon. Although silicon will continue to be of central importance in the next century, carbon, silicon's upstairs neighbor in the periodic table, will also be of great impor­ tance in future technology. Carbon has more flexible bonding and hence has various unique physical, chemical and biological properties. It has two types of bonding, sp3 and sp2, in diamond and graphite, respectively. The existence of the latter, "7r-electron bonding" , is responsible for carbon's versatile tal­ ents. Those materials having extended 7r-electron clouds are called '7r-electron materials'. They include graphite, carbon nanotubes, fullerenes and various carbonaceous materials. They may be called "supercarbon" because of their fabulous multiformity and versatile properties. This volume is a status report on the synthesis, properties and appli­ cations of 7r-electron materials, representing an updated proceedings of the International Workshop on 7r-Electron Materials held at the Northwestern University,'Evanston, Illinois, USA, August 13-14,1996. The Workshop was organized jointly by the Japan Science and Technology Corporation (JST) and the Materials Research Center at the Northwestern University (NWU) in order to provide an opportunity for scientists and engineers to meet and dis­ cuss the latest advances in this field and in commemoration of the Yoshimura 7r-Electron Materials Project, one of Japan's national projects in the JST's ERATO (Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology) program.

This book is a status report on the synthesis, properties, and applications of new carbonaceous materials. These materials are called pi-electron materials since they have extended pi-electron clouds in the solid state. They include carbon, nanotubes, fullerenes, and graphite. The major topics are the synthesis of graphite and carbon nanotubes at low temperatures, intercalation compounds of carbon nanotubes exhibiting universal conductance fluctuation, and technological applications of carbon materials in semiconductor physics, chemistry, and biology. The special properties of pi-electron materials give rise to the development of novel functional devices. This book is written for materials researchers, physicists, and research engineers involved in the development of these new carbon-based devices.