Ultrahard bulk amorphous carbon from collapsed fullerene

Shang, Yuchen; Liu, Zhaodong; Dong, Jiajun; Yao, Mingguang; Yang, Zhenxing; Li, Quanjun; Zhai, Chunguang; Shen, Fangren; Hou, Xuyuan; Wang, Lin; Zhang, Nianqiang; Zhang, Wei; Fu, Rong; Ji, Jianfeng; Zhang, Xingmin; Lin, He; Fei, Yingwei; Sundqvist, Bertil; Wang, Weihua; Liu, Bingbing
2021
NATURE
DOI
10.1038/s41586-021-03882-9
Preparing amorphous phases of carbon with mostly sp(3) bonding in bulk is challenging, but macroscopic samples that are nearly pure sp(3) are synthesized here by heating fullerenes at high pressure.