Structural variety and stability of carbon honeycomb cellular structures

Abstract

A new synthesized carbon honeycomb allotrope reported previously, built from graphene nanoribbons connected by sp3-bonded carbon junction lines, forms a family of cellular structures with high porosity and sorption capacity. In this work we first propose a complete set of possible honeycomb structures of different wall chiralities both the armchair and zigzag types, including considered earlier only theoretically, for the structural analysis of such structures by means of the high-energy electron diffraction method. The “completeness” of the model set made it possible to obtain nearly perfect coincidence of the experimental and calculated diffraction intensities. The contribution of graphite fragments and random structures, also involved in the analysis, turned out to be zero. Only a limited number of honeycomb structures of different types almost ideally describes the experiment. Thus we conclude that polydomain structures corresponding to a set of basic models formed in this investigation rather than formations dominated by random structures. The samples under study have demonstrated the unique cellular stability since were stored in vacuum ∼4.5 months before the reported measurements. Along with the original results the history of the carbon honeycomb cellular structures is briefly presented.