Carbon in an international journal founded in conjunction with the American Carbon Society and serves as a forum for communicating scientific advances in the field of carbon materials and carbon nanomaterials. The journal reports significant new findings related to the formation, structure, properties, behaviors, and technological applications of carbons.In 2016 the Carbon Editors decided to open the first issue of the new year with an editorial contribution to address the future challenges in carbon science. We are now conducting this exercise every two years, and the present article is the third such perspective. A number of current Carbon Editors and members of the Editorial Board have contributed to different sections on the state of carbon research aiming to highlight where selected research fields are moving in the near future.
Last year we celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Periodic Table that has revolutionized not only the world of chemistry, but also that of other fundamental disciplines including physics, biology, medicine, and materials science. The carbon element () occupies the second period and it is the first element of the IV group (carbon group) according to the Mendeleev Table of Chemical Elements (1869). Carbon is one of the most stable and abundant elements on Earth and it is the fourth most abundant in the Universe. It is known since ancient times but it was recognized as an atom only in the second half of the 18th century by Antoine Lavoisier.
Carbon is present in different allotropic forms that go from 0-dimensional to 3-dimensional structures, all covered by the articles published in Carbon. While some of the forms like graphene and their derivatives are gaining more and more popularity, we emphasize that our journal continues to also consider traditional forms of carbon, especially when new properties are discovered and exploited in the development of new functional materials, applications, or devices. In addition, our Editorial team strongly supports the publication of results that utilize less popular carbon allotropes provided that the studies are not limited to the use of new precursors and report properties that are very similar to those already described in the literature. We encourage instead the carbon scientific community to go beyond incremental works and to revisit old forms of carbon in new disruptive technologies and applications.
On these premises, we have combined our ideas and perspectives, producing a series of editorial sections based on individual subfields. First, Nikhil Koratkar presents new findings on the partial transparency and epitaxy of graphene, which have important implications in the field of surface engineering, Next, Vincent Meunier and Mauricio Terrones address the emerging domain of material informatics that has tremendous impact on artificial intelligence (AI) applications. The same authors cover the use of carbon materials in quantum computing. Yuan Chen then describes the important role of carbon materials in catalysis, without which most industrial processes would not be sustainable. Juan Tascon highlights the recent trends to reduce the amounts of CO2 by its electroreduction to solid carbons. Elzbieta Frackowiak covers the effects of doping carbon materials with nitrogen and oxygen to achieve high electrochemical performance for applications in energy storage. Michael Holzinger provides an overview of carbon forms to enhance the sensitivity of biosensors. Sergey Mikhailovsky presents the state of the art of activated carbon and its millennial use in the biomedical field. Finally, Michael Strano covers new directions on the use of carbon nanotubes in plant biotechnology. We hope our readers will find these personal opinions and viewpoints helpful.
Read Carbon science perspective in 2020: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0008622320300622?via%3Dihub