Building Blocks Approach in EELS (from Graphite to Graphene to Carbon Nanotubes)

1. Graphite to Graphene Calculations of EELS spectra for low-dimensional systems, such as Graphene, suffer from a slow convergence with supercell size. I will show, how to use bulk Graphite calculations to obtain ab-initio Graphene spectra by an interpolation of the polarisability chi0. 2. Graphite to Carbon Nanotubes The dielectric approach, i.e. the solution of the Maxwell equations using the macroscopic dielectric constant for the response of the material, is known to fail at the atomic level. However, using the full microscopic dielectric function instead, allows us to calculate EELS spectra of complicated nanostructures such as Single Wall Carbon Nanotubes from a simple Graphite calculation.