Ultrahard bulk amorphous carbon from collapsed fullerene

Yuchen Shang; Zhaodong Liu; Jiajun Dong; Mingguang Yao; Zhenxing Yang; Quanjun Li; Chunguang Zhai; Fangren Shen; Xuyuan Hou; Lin Wang; Nianqiang Zhang; Wei Zhang; Rong Fu; Jianfeng Ji; Xingmin Zhang; He Lin; Yingwei Fei; Bertil Sundqvist; Weihua Wang; Bingbing Liu

doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03882-9

Ultrahard bulk amorphous carbon from collapsed fullerene

Nature. 2021 Nov;599(7886):599-604. doi: 10.1038/s41586-021-03882-9. Epub 2021 Nov 24.

Authors

Yuchen Shang^#¹, Zhaodong Liu^#^{1

2}, Jiajun Dong^#¹, Mingguang Yao³, Zhenxing Yang¹, Quanjun Li¹, Chunguang Zhai¹, Fangren Shen¹, Xuyuan Hou¹, Lin Wang^{4

5}, Nianqiang Zhang⁶, Wei Zhang⁷, Rong Fu⁸, Jianfeng Ji⁹, Xingmin Zhang⁹, He Lin⁹, Yingwei Fei⁴, Bertil Sundqvist^{1

10}, Weihua Wang¹¹, Bingbing Liu^{12

13}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials, College of Physics, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
² Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facility, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials, College of Physics, Jilin University, Changchun, China. [email protected].
⁴ Earth and Planets Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington DC, USA.
⁵ Bayerisches Geoinstitut, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany.
⁶ Key Laboratory of Structures Dynamic Behavior and Control of Ministry of Education, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China.
⁷ Key Laboratory of Automobile Materials MOE, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Electron Microscopy Center, and International Center of Future Science, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
⁸ School of Materials Science and Engineering, State Key Laboratory of Advanced Special Steel, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China.
⁹ Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.
¹⁰ Department of Physics, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden.
¹¹ Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
¹² State Key Laboratory of Superhard Materials, College of Physics, Jilin University, Changchun, China. [email protected].
¹³ Synergetic Extreme Condition User Facility, Jilin University, Changchun, China. [email protected].

^# Contributed equally.

PMID: 34819685
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-03882-9

Abstract

Amorphous materials inherit short- and medium-range order from the corresponding crystal and thus preserve some of its properties while still exhibiting novel properties^1,2. Due to its important applications in technology, amorphous carbon with sp² or mixed sp²-sp³ hybridization has been explored and prepared^3,4, but synthesis of bulk amorphous carbon with sp³ concentration close to 100% remains a challenge. Such materials inherit the short-/medium-range order of diamond and should also inherit its superior properties⁵. Here, we successfully synthesized millimetre-sized samples-with volumes 10³-10⁴ times as large as produced in earlier studies-of transparent, nearly pure sp³ amorphous carbon by heating fullerenes at pressures close to the cage collapse boundary. The material synthesized consists of many randomly oriented clusters with diamond-like short-/medium-range order and possesses the highest hardness (101.9 ± 2.3 GPa), elastic modulus (1,182 ± 40 GPa) and thermal conductivity (26.0 ± 1.3 W m^-1 K^-1) observed in any known amorphous material. It also exhibits optical bandgaps tunable from 1.85 eV to 2.79 eV. These discoveries contribute to our knowledge about advanced amorphous materials and the synthesis of bulk amorphous materials by high-pressure and high-temperature techniques and may enable new applications for amorphous solids.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't