Authors:
Yun Shen Zhou
Wei Xiong
Jongbok Park
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0511, USA

Min Qian
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska, 68588-0511, USA and Department of Physics, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, People’s Republic of China

Masoud Mahjouri-Samani
Yang Gao
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0511, USA

Lan Jiang
Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, People’s Republic of China

Yongfeng Lu
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0511, USA

An overview of laser-assisted techniques developed in our group for fabricating carbon nanostructures, including two-dimensional graphene, one-dimensional carbon nanotubes, and zero-dimensional carbon nanoonions, is presented. Unique laser-material interactions provide versatile possibilities in fabricating carbon nanostructures, including localized heating, direct laser writing, tip-enhanced optical near-field effect, polarization, ablation, resonant excitation, precise energy delivery, and mask-free direct patterning. Rapid single-step fabrication of graphene patterns was achieved using laser directing writing. Parallel integration of single-walled carbon nanotubes was realized by making use of tip-enhanced optical near-field effect. High-quality carbon nanoonions were obtained through laser resonant excitation of precursor molecules.