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Updated: Apr 23, 2026

Fabrication of 3D Carbon Microelectromechanical Systems C-MEMS
Published on: June 17, 2017
Benzene-derived carbon nanothreads
Thomas C Fitzgibbons1, Malcolm Guthrie2, En-shi Xu3
11] Department of Chemistry, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA [2] Materials Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA.
Abstract:
Low-dimensional carbon nanomaterials such as fullerenes, nanotubes, graphene and diamondoids have extraordinary physical and chemical properties. Compression-induced polymerization of aromatic molecules could provide a viable synthetic route to ordered carbon nanomaterials, but despite almost a century of study this approach has produced only amorphous products. Here we report recovery to ambient pressure of macroscopic quantities of a crystalline one- dimensional sp(3) carbon nanomaterial formed by high-pressure solid-state reaction of benzene. X-ray and neutron diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, solid-state NMR, transmission electron microscopy and first-principles calculations reveal close- packed bundles of subnanometre-diameter sp(3)-bonded carbon threads capped with hydrogen, crystalline in two dimensions and short-range ordered in the third. These nanothreads promise extraordinary properties such as strength and stiffness higher than that of sp(2) carbon nanotubes or conventional high-strength polymers. They may be the first member of a new class of ordered sp(3) nanomaterials synthesized by kinetic control of high-pressure solid-state reactions.
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