Carbon Nanomaterials from Oligoyne Surfactants

Carbonaceous nanocoatings such as diamond-like amorphous carbon or graphene layers exhibit remarkable properties in multiple fields, ranging from corrosion protection to electronics and lubrication. However, they are typically deposited from the vapor phase at high temperatures (700-900C) restricting easy processing. In our laboratory, we recently developed the solution-based formation of carbon-rich films using reactive oligoyne amphiphiles that can undergo carbonization under mild conditions at room temperature. In this way, atomically dense, crosslinked carbon nanosheets were obtained by UV irradiation of a hexayne amphiphile monolayer assembled at the air/water interface with the help of Langmuir-Blodgett technique. However, the tedious preparation of Langmuir-Blodgett monolayers, as well as potentially poor adhesion, the creation of defects and wrinkling induced by transferring the monolayer to a random substrate, call for a more straightforward preparation. Self-assembled monolayers offer a way to circumvent the abovementioned problems by directly forming a monolayer on a substrate through simple immersion into an amphiphile solution and carbonizing the resulting self-assembled monolayers by UV irradiation. In the proposed thesis, we aim to explore the preparation of carbon thin films from self-assembled monolayers of reactive precursors directly on solid surfaces at room temperature.