Graphdiyne (GD), a novel carbon allotrope with a 2D structure comprising benzene rings and carbon-carbon triple bonds, is successfully integrated with ZnO nanoparticles by a wet chemistry method. An ultraviolet photodetector based on these graphdiyne:ZnO nanocomposites exhibits significantly enhanced performance in comparison with a conventional ZnO device. GD may have diverse applications in future optoelectronics.

An explosion approach was developed for efficiently preparing graphdiynes (GDYs) at 120 °C in air without any metal catalyst. The GDYs show great superiority in terms of thermal stability, conductivity (20 S m) and surface area (up to 1150 m g), and can be applied as promising anodes for storing lithium/sodium ions.

all-carbon materials hold great fascination because of their superior properties and promising applications. Herein, we presented the first demonstration for the use of graphdiyne (GDY) as photothermo-acoustic wave nanotransducers for simultaneous effective photoacoustic imaging (PAI) and photothermal therapy (PTT) in living mice. With a large extinction coefficient in near-infrared (NIR) region, upon irradiated by 808 nm laser, GDY not only exhibits a stable photothermal performance with a high photothermal conversion efficiency of 42%, but also provides an excellent photoacoustic response. Owing to its good biocompatibility modified with PEGylation, GDY can be simultaneously used as PAI probe and PTT agent and exhibits an efficient photothermal ablation of cancer cells in living mice. This work opens a new way into the development of 2D graphdiynes as novel theranostic platform for cancer treatment.