Carbon-Enriched meso-Entropy Materials: from Theory to Cases

Carbon-enriched materials, including carbon allotropes, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polymers, frameworks, etc., are rising as stars in functional materials field. Large amount of reported work focused on development of new structures with typical features for novel applications, and has long ignored the intrinsic relationship between similar structures. The superficial relationships of those carbon-enriched materials in textbook, e.g., isomers, allotropes and topological defects, are no longer enough for fundamental understanding the structure-property relationship study due to more and more carbon-enriched materials have been developed. Such disadvantage has long hindered development of new materials based on well-established material systems. In this work, meso-entropy concept is proposed for understanding and development of different kinds of carbon-enriched materials by comparing their relative entropy values. Based on theoretical models and case-to-case discussion, meso-entropy concept has been found compatible with the concept of isomers, allotropes and topological defects in carbon-enriched materials. From now on, hopefully, the meso-entropy defined relationship for carbon-enriched materials will be no longer staying at the geometric level, and provide new thinking development of new carbon-enriched materials and other meso-entropy materials.