Optoelectronic Properties of Amorphous Carbon-Based Nanotube and Nanoscroll

TL;DR

This study investigates the optoelectronic properties of amorphous carbon monolayers, nanotubes, and nanoscrolls, revealing their potential as ultraviolet filters due to their broad absorption spectrum and reflectivity characteristics.

Contribution

It provides the first ab initio and tight-binding analysis of amorphous carbon structures and their derivatives, highlighting their optical properties and potential applications.

Findings

All structures absorb from infrared to ultraviolet, peaking around 3.2 eV.

Reflectivity varies from 0.3-0.5 in infrared to 0.0-0.1 in ultraviolet.

Structures are promising candidates for ultraviolet filtering applications.

Abstract

Free-standing monolayer amorphous carbon (MAC) is a pure carbon structure composed of randomly distributed atom rings with different sizes, which was recently synthesized. In this work, we carried out ab initio and tight-binding calculations to investigate the optoelectronic properties of MAC and its derived nanotube and nanoscroll configurations. Our results show MAC, tube, and scrolls exhibit similar electronic behavior. All structures absorb from infrared to ultraviolet, with maximum absorption peaks the visible-ultra violet ($\sim 3.2$ eV). The maximum and minimum reflectivity values are in the range 0.3-0.5 (infrared) and 0.1-0.0 (ultraviolet), making these materials good candidates to ultraviolet filters.