Wet-Chemistry Synthesis of Carbon Nanostructures

Carbon nanostructures have excellent physical and chemical properties with wide applications in optoelectronics, energy storage and conversion, bioimaging and drug delivery, catalysis, and so on. Many efforts have been made during the past several decades toward the synthesis of the various types of carbon nanomaterials, and, among them, the wet-chemistry synthesis methods such as hydrothermal, sol-gel, and coprecipitation methods play important roles. Herein, we briefly summarize the recent advances in the wet-chemistry synthesis of various types of carbon nanostructures, including zero-dimensional (graphene, diamond, n-diamond, C8 quantum dots, carbon nano onions, and fullerenes), one-dimensional (carbon nanotubes, nanohorns, nanofibers, and nanowires), two-dimensional (graphene, graphenylene, graphdiyne, carbon nitrides), and three-dimensional (nanographite, graphene nanocomposites, nanospheres) nanostructures. The virtues and deficiencies of the different synthesis routes are discussed. A glimpse of the challenges and future developments of the wet-chemistry synthesis methods of the carbon nanostructures is presented.