Scientists accidentally turn graphene into diamond

10 years ago | Posted in: science | 698 Views

Always remember: Diamond was the original super-material. Where next-gen materials like graphene leverage bleeding edge techniques in chemical manipulation, making diamond requires just the slow, uncomplicated forces of nature.

Still, graphene and diamond are not all that dissimilar in structure; while it’s unlikely that we could peel off single-atom sheets of diamond to make graphene, is it possible that layered sheets of graphene could be fused together into diamond? New research from Stanford University seems to have proven just that.

Graphene is a single atom thick sheet of carbon atoms bonded to each other in a uniform — but perfectly flat — lattice. It can be thought of as two-dimensional diamond, since diamond has basically the same structure and composition but in three dimensions. This study aimed to look at the electronic effects of treating graphene, presumably to see if it could be made more useful as a material for transistors. Instead, they found that hydrogenation caused their layered sheets of graphene to fuse with each other, and eventually with the platinum substrate underneath. What this created was a piece of platinum with an extremely thin coating of something closely resembling diamond…. see more

source: Geek.com

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