The importance of defects and dopants within carbon nanomaterials during the fabrication of polymer composites

This chapter reviews the modification of carbon nanostructures using different approaches such as: (a) doping, addition of foreign atoms into the carbon nanostructures, (b) introduction of structural defects (c) functionalization involving covalent or noncovalent bondingwith different molecules. The dispersion and the physicochemical properties are analyzed for composites prepared using carbon nanostructures. The fabrication of composite materials with carbon nanostructures has been challenging due to the difficulty of uniformly dispersing carbon nanostructures within a host matrix. Various strategies have been developed to overcome this obstacle. These involve the addition of compatibilizing agents to the carbon nanostructures (by covalent or noncovalent functionalization) and acid treatment (introduction of defects into the hexagonal network and oxygenated functional groups) amongst others. These strategies are designed specifically to improve the dispersion of carbon nanomaterials in the host matrix, but frequently the effect of the particular carbon structure or its properties are not considered, especially when the target property is biocompatibility.