Scientists create a new form of carbon

Scientists have formulated a new form of carbon which is elastic as well as electrically conducive. A substance with such distinctive traits can possibly provide scientists with an extensive range of applications ranging from military armor to aerospace engineering.

Due to its electron arrangements, carbon element contains countless possibilities. The ultra strong and lightweight carbon creates materials of varying characteristics because of its several self-bonding combinations of electrons. Material such as diamonds, graphite or the industrial lubricant are all made up of carbon only.

The team consisting of many Carnegie scientists pressurized and heated a structurally disordered type of carbon known as glassy carbon. Per their research published by Science Advances, glassy carbon was brought to almost 250,000 times the normal atmospheric pressure and was heated to around 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit for creating the new elastic and strong form of carbon.

Experiments were also conducted previously when scientists tried subjecting glassy carbon to high pressures at room temperature and extremely high temperatures. However, under high pressure, when the element was brought back to ambient pressure, it was unable to sustain its structure. Even when at under extremely high temperatures, nanocrystalline diamonds were created, explains Phys.org.

The new form of carbon consists of both diamond-like and graphite-like bonding patterns which results in the exceptional amalgamation of properties. When under high-pressure synthesis state, disordered layers buckle, merge and connect in diverse ways within the glassy carbon. After this process, the overall structure is generated which is deficient of long-range spatial order but has a short-range spatial organization on the nanometer scale.

Science Daily reported Zhisheng Zhao, one of the scientists saying, “Light materials with high strength and robust elasticity like this are very desirable for applications where weight savings are of the utmost importance, even more than material cost.”

“What's more, we believe that this synthesis method could be honed to create other extraordinary forms of carbon and entirely different classes of materials,” concluded Zhao.