For The First Time Ever, Scientists Develop A Stable Ring of Carbon
Monday, August 19, 2019 IST
Carbon is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, with so many compounds it forms and all life on Earth being carbon-based it is the King of Elements. Carbon through allotropy (property of elements to exist in two or more forms in the same physical state) can exist as diamond, graphite, fullerene and all compounds with different physical and chemical properties. Diamond is one of the strongest materials while graphite is fragile.
One such form of carbon is cyclo[n]carbon, which is a ring of carbon atoms bonded to each consisting only of carbon atoms. Because of their high reactivity, these compounds have not been isolated or structurally characterized until now. Recently a team of scientists from Oxford University and IBM Research were successfully able to create cyclo[18]carbon (C18) which was described in a research paper published in a science magazine by American Association for the Advancement of Science and a blog post on the website of University of Oxford.
They were able to produce the compound by eliminating carbon monoxide from a cyclocarbon oxide molecule C24O6 through atom manipulation on bilayer NaCl on Cu(111) at 5 Kelvin. Using high-resolution atomic force microscopy revealed a polyynic structure with of carbon atoms with alternating triple and single bonds.
The structure of cyclo[n]carbon has been a long debate of whether the carbon atoms would be in a ring connected solely by double bonds or connected by alternating single and triple bond. It is yet to be seen whether these rings can be stable when taken of the layer of salt, but they potentially have amazing electronic properties like graphene. The process can synthesize only one molecule at a time which is inefficient and restricts the use of these in applications. Thus further research is required to develop more efficient processes and to understand the various properties of the material.
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