New 3D form of carbon made in the lab
Like diamond, diamondiyne allotrope forms covalent bonds in three dimensions The post New 3D form of carbon made in the lab appeared first on Physics World .
Researchers in Sweden have successfully synthesized a new allotrope of carbon, dubbed "diamondiyne." Unlike diamond, diamondiyne forms covalent bonds in three dimensions at relatively low pressure, resulting in a porous crystal structure with properties yet to be fully understood. Carbon, a versatile element in the periodic table, can bond with other elements in one, two, or three dimensions, forming structures with varying electronic properties.
This versatility extends to its self-bonding, creating allotropes like fullerene (zero-dimensional), carbon nanotubes (one-dimensional), and graphite/graphene (two-dimensional). The pursuit of more carbon allotropes began in 2004 after graphene's isolation. Over 1635 theoretically predicted structures exist, though most remain uncreated in the lab.
An expanded version of graphene, graphdiyne, was created more than 30 years ago, but manufacturing diamondiyne has proven challenging. Tetraethynylmethane, a key building block, is unstable, and the strong covalent bonds among diamondiyne's carbon atoms hindered its crystalline formation. In the new study published in Angewandt Chemie, researchers Karl Börjesson and colleagues from the University of Gothenburg achieved the desired crystalline state through a cascade reaction on a liquid-liquid interface.
This approach enabled the monomers to bind to formed crystallites one by one, resulting in an expanded "carbo-mer of diamond" structure with sp 3 -hybridized carbons connected by sp-hybridized carbons to form two triple bonds, known as a diyne group. This marks diamondiyne as the first allotrope besides diamond where carbon atoms form covalent bonds in all three dimensions.
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