Nanotubes and graphene: blurring the boundaries of hard and soft matter
Paul McEuen
Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics and
Kavli Institute at Cornell for Nanoscale Science
Cornell University
Nanoscale forms of carbon have properties that are characteristic of both soft and hard matter.
In many ways, graphene is a “soft” membrane material: a flexible, robust, one-atom thick sheet
with bending stiffness comparable to a lipid bilayer. Nevertheless, it has a stretching stiffness
comparable to diamond and electronic properties that rival the best “hard” materials. A similar
story holds for carbon nanotubes. In this talk we will present new results on the structural,
physical, and electronic properties of nanotubes and graphene, emphasizing their dual soft and
hard nature. Topics include grain stitching and patchwork-quilt structure of polycrystalline
graphene membranes, the effects of thermal fluctuations on the properties of nanotube
resonators, and the ultrafast carrier dynamics in nanotube and graphene p-n junctions. In each
case, we find that these materials blur the boundaries of hard and soft matter in interesting and
surprising ways.