posted on 2024-01-26, 22:31authored byZahra Farmani, Alessandro Vetere, Norbert Pfänder, Christian W. Lehmann, Wolfgang Schrader
Carbon is one of
the most important chemical elements, forming
a wide range of important allotropes, ranging from diamond over graphite
to nanostructural materials such as graphene, fullerenes, and carbon
nanotubes (CNTs). Especially these nanomaterials play an important
role in technology and are commonly formed in laborious synthetic
processes that often are of high energy demand. Recently, fullerenes
and their building blocks (buckybowls) have been found in natural
fossil materials formed under geological conditions. The question
arises of how diverse nature can be in forming different types of
natural allotropes of carbon. This is investigated here, using modern
analytical methods such as ultrahigh-resolution mass spectrometry
and transmission electron microscopy, which facilitate a detailed
understanding of the diversity of natural carbon allotropes. Large
fullerenes, fullertubes, graphene sheets, and double- and multiwalled
CNTs together with single-walled CNTs were detected in natural heavy
fossil materials while theoretical calculations on the B3LYP/6-31G(d)
level of theory using the ORCA software package support the findings.