Formation of diamond powders from melamine under high pressure and high temperature

Abstract

High pressure pyrolysis of melamine has been attracting great interest recently, due to it being considered as a suitable precursor to realize the g-C3N4 and even superhard C3N4. In this work, we studied the detailed pyrolysis behavior of melamine at 22 GPa. Melamine was stable at 800 °C, and decomposed to diamond in the form of powder at 1500–2000 °C under this pressure condition. At 2000 °C, the pure cubic diamond powders with 0.1–0.5 μm grain size were obtained. The diamond particles exhibited euhedral forms and dispersed to each other, we proposed that these novel features were caused by the presence of liquid N2 and NH3 during diamond formation. The high pressure pyrolysis of melamine may provide a new means of producing micrometer-sized diamond powders.