Making diamond from disordered forms of carbon

Glassy carbon (GC) is a class of disordered carbon materials that is known to be superelastic and non-graphitizing to extreme temperatures. We have previously shown that samples sourced from two suppliers are investigated using a huge suite of materials techniques (Rutherford backscattering spectrometry and elastic recoil detection analysis for composition, Raman spectroscopy, transmission electron microscope imaging, X-ray and neutron diffraction for structure determination, nanoindentation for mechanical properties, and Van der Pauw measurements for resistivity) show that the broad classifications of Type I or Type II do not correlate with the physical properties of the samples. This is really interesting as this material is used as the precursor to form a new harder-than-diamond carbon called Lonsdaleite. We would like to explore if the different types of this material influence this process.

The project would use diamond anvil cells and Raman to understand how these different materials behave under extreme pressures.