Crystal structure of graphite under room-temperature compression and decompression
- Yale
Recently, sophisticated theoretical computational studies have proposed several new crystal structures of carbon (e.g., bct-C{sub 4}, H-, M-, R-, S-, W-, and Z-carbon). However, until now, there lacked experimental evidence to verify the predicted high-pressure structures for cold-compressed elemental carbon at least up to 50 GPa. Here we present direct experimental evidence that this enigmatic high-pressure structure is currently only consistent with M-carbon, one of the proposed carbon structures. Furthermore, we show that this phase transition is extremely sluggish, which led to the observed broad x-ray diffraction peaks in previous studies and hindered the proper identification of the post-graphite phase in cold-compressed carbon.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Advanced Photon Source (APS)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE - BASIC ENERGY SCIENCES
- OSTI ID:
- 1049579
- Journal Information:
- Sci. Rep., Vol. 2, Issue 2012
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- ENGLISH
Similar Records
Understanding the nature of “superhard graphite”
Hard, transparent, sp3-containing 2D phase formed from few-layer graphene under compression