Ferromagnetic Carbon Nanostructures.

Carbon nanostructures are regarded as all—carbon structures with the nanometer size. Building blocks of the future, building blocks of future information and energy technologies — here are the permanent epithets for carbon nanostructures. Scientific interest, sparked by the discovery of fullerenes [1], refocused on carbon nanotubes [2] and other exotic structures like nanofibers, nanoribbons, nanohoops, nanocones and nanohorns [3], toroids [4] and helicoidal tubes [5], onions and peapods [6], Schwarzites and Haeckelites [7]. More recently, it was discovered that the two—dimensional building block for creating the nanostructures of any other dimensionality, graphene, itself possesses unique electronic properties: ballistic electron transport, constant velocity for the electrons confined in the graphene sheets (massless particle behaviour), half—integer shift in the quantum Hall effect and quantized minimum conductivity [8-10]. The linear dependence of the energy on momentum in graphene leads to unusual features, not encountered in other materials [11]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]