Fig. 5: The products of shock-driven benzene on the principal Hugoniot form from dimerization and polymerization, followed by condensation into clusters with the sheet-like structure of sp2–sp3 character. | Nature Communications

Fig. 5: The products of shock-driven benzene on the principal Hugoniot form from dimerization and polymerization, followed by condensation into clusters with the sheet-like structure of sp2sp3 character.

From: Carbon clusters formed from shocked benzene

Fig. 5

A Carbon phase diagram showing diamond, graphite and liquid regions from several works (see legend)62,63,64,66,71,72. A region of transition from sp2–sp3 hybridized allotropes is proposed to occur in the diamond region by Blank et al. 73,74,75. P–T states along the principal reactants and products Hugoniots, and the calculated P–T states from shocked benzene (this work) are overlaid on the phase diagram (errors as reported in Table 1 and Supplementary Note 1). B Schematic of the proposed mechanism of cluster formation from benzene. Shocked liquid benzene undergoes dimerization and polymerization addition reactions to form clusters with disordered, hydrogenated layered carbon structures with sp2–sp3 character. C Transmission electron micrograph of recovered carbon from PBX 9502, and explosive that samples a similar P–T condition to the experiments described here, showing the transition from layered-sp2 to sp3-diamond-like structures within the structure. Recovery of products from the laser-driven shock compression experiments of benzene was not feasible.

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