Long-range ordered porous carbons produced from C60
1Department of Materials Science and Engineering, School of Chemistry and Materials Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.
Nature
|January 11, 2023
Summary
Researchers developed gram-scale long-range ordered porous carbon (LOPC) from C60 powder using a novel catalytic method. This new carbon material, LOPC, opens doors for discovering other crystalline carbon structures.
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Chemistry
- Condensed Matter Physics
Background:
- Previous methods for creating covalently bonded carbon structures from C60 molecules yielded minimal sample quantities.
- Limited sample sizes hindered detailed characterization and exploration of C60-based materials for applications.
Purpose of the Study:
- To report a scalable method for preparing a novel carbon material from C60.
- To characterize the structure, properties, and formation mechanism of the new material.
Main Methods:
- Gram-scale synthesis of long-range ordered porous carbon (LOPC) from C60 powder catalyzed by alpha-lithium nitride (α-Li3N) at ambient pressure.
- Characterization using X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy, solid-state NMR, transmission electron microscopy, and neutron scattering.
- Numerical simulations employing a neural network to understand the material's formation pathway.
Main Results:
- Successful gram-scale preparation of LOPC, a material composed of connected, broken C60 cages with long-range periodicity.
- LOPC identified as a metastable structure formed during the fullerene-to-graphene transition, distinct from polymerized C60 crystals.
- LOPC exhibits higher electron delocalization and a room temperature electrical conductivity of 1.17 × 10^-2 S cm^-1.
Conclusions:
- The development of a scalable LOPC synthesis method overcomes previous limitations in sample availability.
- LOPC represents a new class of crystalline carbon materials derived from fullerenes.
- This work facilitates the discovery of other novel crystalline carbon structures.
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