From Popular Science:
In a series of recently published papers, including a paper published this week in the Journal of Applied Physics, researchers from North Carolina State University announced that they have created a new form of carbon, called Q-carbon.
Pure carbon (without additional elements, such as oxygen, mixed in) has a few distinct solid forms that it can take. The first is graphite, in which the carbon atoms line up to form thin sheets. Graphite is thin and flakey, used to make graphene and pencil lead. The other phase of carbon occurs when carbon atoms form a rigid crystal lattice, the building blocks of diamonds, which are used in industry and, of course, jewelry.
"We've now created a third solid phase of carbon," Jay Narayan, lead author of the paper, said in a statement. "The only place it may be found in the natural world would be possibly in the core of some planets."
Narayan and his team created Q-carbon by putting amorphous carbon on a base layer of a hard substance (either sapphire, glass, or plastic) then shooting lasers at it. Amorphous carbon, for the record, is carbon that doesn't have a defined structure--it's probably got a bit of graphite or diamond, but no unifying structure, so it doesn't count as a 'solid phase of carbon'. The lasers fused the amorphous carbon into a crystalline structure harder than diamond; Q-carbon.
The researchers were able to create layers of Q-carbon between 40 and 500 nanometers thick (that's less than 0.0005 millimeters at the largest). The new substance is ferromagnetic, meaning it can be magnetized, and can glow when exposed to electric fields. Eventually this material could lead to new super-thin yet durable displays or screens, but that day is a long way off. For now, researchers are still learning about the basic properties of this new material.
The cited papers can be found on AIP.org.
Research Update: Direct Conversion of Amorphous Carbon into Diamond at Ambient Pressures and Temperatures in Air
Novel Phase of Carbon, Ferromagnetism, and Conversion into Diamond
More coverage from the NC State News
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @03:42AM
Remember guys, you have to put a down payment on your application to access that pussy.
(Score: 3, Informative) by moondoctor on Sunday December 06 2015, @04:11AM
Unless you're into hookers, if you have to pay to get some you're doing it wrong...
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @06:08AM
You're deluded if you believe marriage is anything other than a financial contract.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @10:55AM
You're deluded if you believe marriage is anything other than a financial contract.
Not married, I take it.
Priced out of the market? Or just too self-centered and gamer-gateish for any female to be in the slightest interested.
Or any male, for that matter. Perhaps you should just put yourself on the market. I hear Idaho is lovely this time of year, especially your own private Idaho.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @08:24AM
Better than outta one.
(Score: 2, Funny) by PocketSizeSUn on Sunday December 06 2015, @03:57AM
A glowing hunk of magnetic carbon. So many questions....
Can the cost go low enough to drive De Beers out of business?
How are the African warlords supposed to fund their endless conflict if diamonds lose their value?
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday December 06 2015, @03:29PM
FYI, artificial diamonds have greatly reduced the cost of industrial diamonds (which used to be offcuts of jewels), but also efficient enough to make pretty large stones.
So much so , that the monopolists (DB etc), started laser etching their stones and marketing it as "natural" diamond...
To be fair, naturally occurring stones have impurities in them. Artificial ones are only as pure as you want them, and who would want that?
(Score: 4, Informative) by kaganar on Sunday December 06 2015, @04:08AM
(Score: 5, Informative) by eof on Sunday December 06 2015, @04:49AM
Nanotubes and buckyballs are graphene in different conformations.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @02:24PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotropes_of_carbon [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 07 2015, @03:47PM
Arent buckyballs a fluid, or a heavy gas (presumed we had big enough pile of them)?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Sunday December 06 2015, @04:59AM
Kurt Vonnegut wrote a story in which Ice 9 was a newly discovered solid phase of water that solidified somewhat above room temperature. It did not occur naturally but would nucleate around a seed crystal, say if you touched your tongue to some you'd solidify.
He happened to meet a crystallographer at a party, and so described the Ice 9 to him. The crystallographer looked really disturbed, went off alone to think for a long time then eventually brightened up and said "It's impossible".
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 06 2015, @05:40AM
So basically, they've made carbon glass.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday December 06 2015, @06:39AM
No, it's crystalline, made from amorphous carbon, so it's more like fused carbon glass crystal.
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(Score: 4, Funny) by Username on Sunday December 06 2015, @05:45AM
Sounds like the right kind of material needed to trap a Doctor for 4.5 billions years in a confession dial.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Sunday December 06 2015, @11:39AM
I am curious about this Carbon allotrope because one already exists called Lonsdaleite which is a crystalline carbon structure with six bonds. anyone know how they compare?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 08 2015, @10:34PM
If the Wikipedia page about lonsdaleite [wikipedia.org] is correct, the mineral is softer than diamond, at 7 or 8 on the Mohs scale. A diagram on that page shows four bonds per atom, as is typical for carbon.