Understanding the effects of the structures on the energy gaps in carbon nanoparticles from laser synthesis

Abstract

The effects of the structures on the energy gaps in luminescent carbon nanoparticles (CNPs) were investigated. On the one hand, we fabricated CNPs with the different structures and a uniform size and then analyzed their photoluminescence (PL) behaviors. On the other hand, we calculated the dependence of the structures on the energy gaps in CNPs by a simple quantitative model. Both the experimental and calculated results show that the luminescent CNPs contain a mixture of sp² and sp³ bonding and hence their PL behaviors and energy gaps are determined by the fraction of sp²-hybridized carbon atoms.