Investigation of Pressure Induced Formation of Diamondene

Pressure is a convenient thermodynamic parameter for obtaining new materials that cannot be synthesized under ambient conditions. For instance, theoretical calculations show that when two layers of graphene are compressed at high-pressures in the presence of specific chemical groups, they can be turned into a 2D diamond called diamondene: a ferromagnetic semiconductor with spin-polarized bands. Efforts to experimentally demonstrate this structure are in the initial stages, yet we have already obtained robust results [1]. In this initial work, we obtained indirect evidence of diamondene formation at room temperature by compressing two layers of graphene using water as a pressure transmitting medium (PTM) in a diamond anvil cell (DAC). The phase transition was identified by measuring the G band dispersion with laser energy as a function of pressure. We will report our progress in investigating this phase transition with new experimental evidences.


[1] Martins, Luiz Gustavo Pimenta, et al. Nature communications 8.1 (2017): 96.