Structural variety and stability of carbon honeycomb cellularstructures

A new synthesized carbon honeycomb allotrope reported previously, built from graphenenanoribbons connected by sp3-bonded carbon junction lines, forms a family ofcellular structures with high porosity and sorption capacity. In this work we firstpropose a complete set of possible honeycomb structures of different wall chiralities boththe armchair and zigzag types, including considered earlier only theoretically, for thestructural analysis of such structures by means of the high-energy electron diffractionmethod. The “completeness” of the model set made it possible to obtain nearly perfectcoincidence of the experimental and calculated diffraction intensities. The contributionof graphite fragments and random structures, also involved in the analysis, turned out tobe zero. Only a limited number of honeycomb structures of different types almost ideallydescribes the experiment. Thus we conclude that polydomain structures corresponding to aset of basic models formed in this investigation rather than formations dominated byrandom structures. The samples under study have demonstrated the unique cellular stabilitysince were stored in vacuum ∼4.5 months before the reported measurements. Along with theoriginal results the history of the carbon honeycomb cellular structures is brieflypresented.