Diamonds From Fullerenes?

[Welwynformed]

Would specific UV irradiation of fullerenes lead to the formation of diamonds due to bond rearrangement? If so could this be extended, through the inclusion of endohedral metallofullerenes, to multi coloured diamonds?

[ToraToraTora]

No.

[Buenchico]

I'm unaware of any research suggesting that UV light can be used to transform fullerenes into diamonds and, indeed, I can't think of any reason why such a transformation would occur.

Plenty of people have tried to create diamond-like structures from fullerenes but with little success. Yoo & Nellis, for example, claimed success using high shock pressures ('Phase Transformations in Carbon Fullerenes at High Shock Pressures', Science, 1991) but others failed to replicate their results. Webb, Qadri, et al tried high pressure techniques but with limited success. ('Novel techniques for the preparation of synthetic diamond', High Pressure Research, 1990). Bocquillon, Bogicevic, et al tried again in 1993. ('C60 Fullerene as Carbon Source for Diamond Synthesis', Journal of Physical Chemistry, 1993).

If you can achieve an alchemist's dream using UV, you'll probably win a Nobel Prize and make a fortune! Good luck in your efforts though ;-)

[theprof]

No. Penetrative depth of UV irradiation is extremely variable. Typically it amounts to anything between 50 and 600 layers in C60 fullerene. That's not good enough.

Carbonyl structures are also created along with amorphous carbon via dissociation of carbon molecules. These constitute obvious problems.

Some research methods have created crystals with right angled bonds but the creation of crystals with a bond angle of about 109 degrees as in a natural diamond has not been possible to date. However, these methods require techniques more complex than just irradiation. Also, you need to be aware of the issue of dangly bonds.

[theprof]

It's many a year since I taught Organic Chemistry at uni but every time I discussed dangling bonds, the subject always raised a smile. They do exist folks!

[sunny-dave]

I think that Dan Gleebond was in the same year as me at Birmingham ...