The structure of liquid carbon elucidated by in situ X-ray diffraction

Year: 2025

Authors: Kraus D., Rips J., Schtzrner M., Stevenson MG., Vorberger J., Ranjan D., Latgert J., Heuser B., Eggert JH., Liermann HP., Oleynik I.I., Pandolfi S., Redmer R., Sollier A., Strohm C., Volz T.J., Albertazzi B., Ali S.J., Antonelli L., Bdhtz C., Ball OB., Banerjee S., Belonoshko AB., Bolme CA., Bouffetier V., Briggs R., Buakor K., Butcher T., Cerantola V., Chantel J., Coleman AL., Collier J., Collins GW., Comley AJ., Cowan TE., Cristoforetti G., Cynn H., Descamps A., Di Cicco A., Cafiso SD., Dorchies F., Duff MJ., Dwivedi A., Edwards C., Errandonea D., Galitskiy S., Galtier E., Ginestet H., Gizzi L., Gleason A., Goede S., Gonzalez JM., Gorman MG., Harmand M., Hartley NJ., Heighway PG., Hernandez-Gomez C., Higginbotham A., Htzppner H., Husband RJ., Hutchinson TM., Hwang H., Keen DA., Kim J., Koester P., Konfpkovb Z., Krygier A., Labate L., Garcia AL., Lazicki AE., Lee Y., Mason P., Masruri M., Massani B., McBride EE., McHardy JD., McGonegle D., McGuire C., McWilliams RS., Merkel S., Morard G., Nagler B., Nakatsutsumi M., Nguyen-Cong K., Norton AM., Ozaki N., Otzen C., Peake DJ., Pelka A., Pereira KA., Phillips JP., Prescher C., Preston TR., Randolph L., Ravasio A., Santamaria-Perez D., Savage DJ., Schoelmerich M., Schwinkendorf JP., Singh S., Smith J., Smith RF., Spear J., Spindloe C., Suer TA., Tang M., Toncian M., Toncian T., Tracy SJ., Trapananti A., Vennari CE., Vinci T., Tyldesley M., Vogel SC., Walsh JPS., Wark JS., Willman JT., Wollenweber L., Zastrau U., Brambrink E., Appel K., McMahon MI.

Autors Affiliation: Univ Rostock, Inst Phys, Rostock, Germany; HZDR, Dresden, Germany; Lawrence Livermore Natl Lab, Livermore, CA USA; Deutsch Elektronen Synchrotron DESY, Hamburg, Germany; Univ S Florida, Dept Phys, Tampa, FL USA; Sorbonne Univ, IMPMC, Museum Natl Hist Nat, Paris, France; CEA DAM Ile de Defrance, Arpajon, France; Univ Paris Saclay, Lab Matiere Condit Extremes, CEA, Bruyeres Le Chatel, France; Ecole Polytech, LULI, Palaiseau, France; Univ York, York Plasma Inst, Sch Phys Engn & Technol, Heslington, England; Univ Edinburgh, SUPA, Sch Phys & Astron, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland; Univ Edinburgh, Ctr Sci Extreme Condit, Edinburgh, Scotland; STFC Rutherford Appleton Lab, CLF, Didcot, England; Nanjing Univ, Frontiers Sci Ctr Crit Earth Mat Cycling, Sch Earth Sci & Engn, Nanjing, Peoples R China; Los Alamos Natl Lab, Los Alamos, NM USA; European XFEL, Schenefeld, Germany; Univ Studi Milano Bicocca, Dipartimento Sci Ambiente & Terra, Milan, Italy; Univ Lille, INRAE, Cent Lille, CNRS, Lille, France; Univ Rochester, Lab Laser Energet, Rochester, NY USA; Univ Rochester, Dept Phys & Astron, Rochester, NY USA; Univ Rochester, Dept Mech Engn, Rochester, NY USA; CNR, Ist Nazl Ott, Pisa, Italy; Queens Univ Belfast, Sch Math & Phys, Belfast, Antrim, North Ireland; Univ Camerino, Sch Sci & Technol, Phys Div, Camerino, Italy; Univ Bordeaux, CELIA, CNRS, CEA, Talence, France; Univ Valencia, Dept Fis Aplicada, Valencia, Spain; SLAC Natl Accelerator Lab, Menlo Pk, CA USA; First Light Fus, Oxford, England; Sorbonne Univ, IMPMC, CNRS, Paris, France; HESAM Univ, CNRS, CNAM, Arts & Metiers Inst Technol,PIMM, Paris, France; Univ Oxford, Dept Phys, Clarendon Lab, Oxford, England; GIST, Dept Environm & Energy Engn, Gwangju, South K orea; STFC Rutherford Appleton Lab, ISIS Facil, Didcot, Oxon, England; Hanyang Univ, Dept Phys, Seoul, South Korea; Ist Nazl Ott CNR INO, Consiglio Nazl Ric, Florence, Italy; Yonsei Univ, Dept Earth Syst Sci, Seoul, South Korea; Univ Savoie Mont Blanc, Univ Grenoble Alpes, Univ Gustave Eiffel, IRD,CNRS,ISTerre, Grenoble, France; Osaka Univ, Grad Sch Engn, Suita, Osaka, Japan; Albert Ludwigs Univ Freiburg, Inst Geound Umweltnat Wissensch, Freiburg, Germany; Univ Massachusetts Amherst, Dept Chem, Amherst, MA USA; Paul Scherrer Inst, Villigen, Switzerland; Carnegie Inst Sci, Earth & Planets Lab, Washington, DC USA.

Abstract: Carbon has a central role in biology and organic chemistry, and its solid allotropes provide the basis of much of our modern technology1. However, the liquid form of carbon remains nearly uncharted2, and the structure of liquid carbon and most of its physical properties are essentially unknown3. But liquid carbon is relevant for modelling planetary interiors4,5 and the atmospheres of white dwarfs6, as an intermediate state for the synthesis of advanced carbon materials7,8, inertial confinement fusion implosions9, hypervelocity impact events on carbon materials10 and our general understanding of s tructured fluids at extreme conditions11. Here we present a precise structure measurement of liquid carbon at pressures of around 1 million atmospheres obtained by in situ X-ray diffraction at an X-ray free-electron laser. Our results show a complex fluid with transient bonding and approximately four nearest neighbours on average, in agreement with quantum molecular dynamics simulations. The obtained data substantiate the understanding of the liquid state of one of the most abundant elements in the universe and can test models of the melting line. The demonstrated experimental abilities open the path to performing similar studies of the structure of liquids composed of light elements at extreme conditions.

Journal/Review: NATURE

Volume: 642 (8067)      Pages from:   to:

More Information: We acknowledge the European XFEL in Schenefeld, Germany, for the provision of X-ray free-electron laser beam time at the Scientific Instrument High Energy Density Science and would like to thank the staff for their assistance. We are indebted to the Helmholtz International Beamline for Extreme Fields user consortium for the provision of instrumentation and staff that enabled this experiment. The data are available (10.22003/XFEL.EU-DATA-002740-00). We acknowledge DESY (Hamburg, Germany), a member of the Helmholtz Association HGF, for the provision of experimental facilities. Parts of this research were carried out at PETRA III (beamline P02.2). The work of D.K., D.R., J.R. and M.G.S. was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) project no. 505630685. J.L. was supported by GSI Helmholtzzentrum fur Schwerionenforschung, Darmstadt, as part of the R&D project SI-URDK2224 with the University of Rostock. K.A., K.B., Z.K., H.-P.L. and R.R. thank the DFG for support within the Research Unit FOR 2440. Part of this work was performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) under contract no. DE-AC52-07NA27344 and was supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Program at LLNL (project no. 21-ERD-032). Part of this work was performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy through the Los Alamos National Laboratory, operated by Triad National Security, for the National Nuclear Security Administration (contract no. 89233218CNA000001). Research presented in this letter was supported by the Department of Energy, Laboratory Directed Research and Development program at Los Alamos National Laboratory under project no. 20190643DR and at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, under contract no. DE-AC02-76SF00515. This work was supported by grant nos. EP/S022155/1 (M.I.M., M.J.D.) EP/S023585/1 (A.H., L.A.) and EP/S025065/1 (J.S.W.) from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. J.D.M. is grateful to AWE for the award of CASE Studentship P030463429; P.G.H. acknowledges support from OxCHEDS through AWE (PDRA contract no. 30469604). E.E.M. and A. Descamps were supported by the UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship (MR/W008211/1) awarded to E.E.M.; D.E. and D.S.-P. from the University of Valencia thank the financial support by the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovacion y Universidades and the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) under grant nos. PID2021-125518NB-I00 and PID2022-138076NB-C41 (cofinanced by EU FEDER funds), and by the Generalitat Valenciana under grant nos. CIPROM/2021/075, CIAICO/2021/241 and MFA/2022/007 (funded by Next Generation EU PRTR-C17.I1). N.J.H. and A.G. were supported by the DOE Office of Science, Fusion Energy Science under FWP 100182. This material is based on the work supported by the Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration under award no. DE-NA0003856 Y.L. is grateful for the support from the Leader Researcher program (NRF-2018R1A3B1052042) of the Korean Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT). B.M. and R.S.M. acknowledge funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme of the European Union (grant agreement no. 101002868). G.W.C. and T.-A.S. acknowledge partial funding from the Depa rtment of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration under award no. DENA0003856 and the Center for Matter at Atomic Pressures, an NSF Physics Frontier Center, award no.PHY-2020249. S.M., H.G. and J. Chantel were funded by the European Union (ERC, HotCores, grant no. 101054994). Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the ERC. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. S.P. acknowledges support from the GOtoXFEL 2023 AAP from CNRS and the ANR grant HEX-DYN (ANR-24-CE30-4792). N.O. was supported by grants from JSPS KAKENHI (grant no. 23K20038), JSPS Core-to-Core program (JPJSCCA20230003) and MEXT Q-LEAP (JP-MXS0118067246). The work of I.I.O., S. Galitskiy, J.M.G. and J.T.W. was supported by the Academic Collaborative Team award of the LLNL and DOE/NNSA (award nos. DE-NA-0003910 and DE-NA-0004089) and DOE/FES (award nos. DE-SC0023508 and DE-SC0024640).
KeyWords: Initio Molecular-dynamics; Graphite; Energy; Laser; Temperature; Transition; Diamonds
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09035-6