Pressure-induced polymerization of aromatic hydrocarbons can be a viable pathway towards synthesizing novel sp3 carbon allotropes. Using aromatic heterocycles as precursor materials provides the advantage of incorporating additional properties due to the presence of a heteroatom. Of the aromatic heterocycles, thiophene (C4H4S) is a system of interest because of its five-phase phase diagram. Chemically synthesized polythiophene compounds have also been previously shown to demonstrate useful optoelectronic properties. Preliminary experimental results indicate that an irreversible transformation occurs at 40 GPa after annealing. The product is a crystalline semi-transparent solid as indicated by in-situ single crystal synchrotron X-Ray diffraction. In-situ vibrational spectroscopy indicates the formation of a polymeric extended product at high pressure with increased sp3 character. The final product is characterized by multi-wavelength Raman spectroscopy, FT-IR spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy.

Pressure-induced polymerization of thiophene into an extended carbon network

254th National Meeting (2017)

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