Table of Contents

This site is under construction. The first section and the lab are relatively complete, the fourth only has the text completed, and the middle sections fall somewhere in between those extremes.

Diamond, Buckyballs, and Graphite

• 1.0 Introduction
  • 1.1 Why are old materials catching current attention?
  • 1.2 What's the connection?
  • 1.3 Atoms--What are they?
  • 1.4 What makes a carbon atom uniquely carbon?
  • 1.5 So how are the building blocks assembled?
  • 1.6 More on bonding
• 2.0 Buckminsterfullerene
  • 2.1 How was Buckyball discovered?
  • 2.2 How does mass spectrometry work?
  • 2.3 The structure of Buckminsterfullerene: the Kroto-Smalley proposal
  • 2.4 Does the Kroto-Smalley experiment prove the structure of buckminsterfullerene?
  • 2.5 How does nuclear magnetic spectroscopy work?
  • 2.6 Electromagnetic Radiation
  • 2.7 NMR measurements and radiofrequency radiation
  • 2.8 NMR measurements and the atomic environments
  • 2.9 NMR and the structure of buckyball
  • 2.10 What is happening in current research with Buckyballs?
  • 2.11 What are the possible applications of Buckyball?
• 3.0 Graphite and Carbon Fibers
  • 3.1 Introduction
  • 3.2 How are carbon fibers and graphite produced?
  • 3.3 What are the properties of graphite and carbon fibers?
  • 3.4 What is the difference between crystalline and amorphous solids?
  • 3.5 How does x-ray diffraction work?
  • 3.6 What are the structures of graphite and carbon fibers, and what can they tell us?
  • 3.7 So, why does carbon fiber convert to graphite at high temperatures?
  • 3.8 What are the other amorphous forms of carbon?
• 4.0 Diamond and Diamond Films
  • 4.1 Why all the excitement?
  • 4.2 Why the holdup?
  • 4.3 What is a diamond and how do we know?
  • 4.4 How do stability and energy affect diamond formation?
  • 4.5 Why don't diamond gems turn into graphite (or burst into flames)?
  • 4.6 How do diamonds form in nature?
  • 4.7 How are synthetic diamond stones made?
  • 4.8 Why do diamond stones cleave when struck by a Jeweler's chisel?
  • 4.9 New diamond thin film technology
  • 4.10 What exactly are diamond films?
  • 4.11 Will materials harder than diamonds soon be available?
• LAB 5.0 Crystalline Solids: Relating Atomic Structure to Physical Properties

Glossary