Graphenylene-Like Structures as a New Class of Multifunctional Materials Alternatives to Graphene

In the last few decades, the study of materials based on sp2-carbon has experienced great development. The advancement of carbon materials science gained great impetus after the discovery of fullerenes and carbon nanotubes, but the experimental finding of graphene caused an unprecedented acceleration in the field. In this context, many other possibilities of carbon allotropes were proposed and synthesized. In this review, we discuss one important class of these graphene analogs, namely the graphenylene. This is a sp2-carbon allotrope with quite interesting physicochemical properties, such as chemical and structural stability, an intrinsic gap, and the presence of periodic nanoscopic pores, for instance. All these special properties pose graphenylene as a promising candidate for several technological applications, such as gas separation, construction of semiconducting nanodevices, Li (Na)-ion batteries, and so on. The review focuses on the theoretical determination, based on DFT calculations, of graphenylene’s properties and a few other materials structurally related to it. Experimental attempts to obtain its synthesis are also briefly discussed. These materials are discussed in terms of their atomic arrangement, mechanical and electronic characteristics discussing possible technological applications. An additional aspect that is reviewed in the text is the possible existence of inorganic (e.g. boron nitride analog) analogs for this material, which were already discussed in the literature and can bring relevant contributions for technological applications due to their special properties.