Universal vibrational anharmonicity in carbyne-like materials

Abstract Carbyne, an infinite linear chain of carbon atoms, is the truly one-dimensional allotrope of carbon. While ideal carbyne and its fundamental properties have remained elusive, carbyne-like materials such as carbyne chains confined inside carbon nanotubes are available for study. Here, we pro...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Johannes M. A. Lechner, Pietro Marabotti, Lei Shi, Thomas Pichler, Carlo Spartaco Casari, Sebastian Heeg
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Portfolio 2025-05-01
Series:Nature Communications
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59555-y
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Summary:Abstract Carbyne, an infinite linear chain of carbon atoms, is the truly one-dimensional allotrope of carbon. While ideal carbyne and its fundamental properties have remained elusive, carbyne-like materials such as carbyne chains confined inside carbon nanotubes are available for study. Here, we probe the longitudinal optical phonon (C mode) of confined carbyne chains by Raman spectroscopy up to the third overtone. We observe a strong vibrational anharmonicity that increases with decreasing C mode frequency, reaching up to 8% for the third overtone. Moreover, we find that the relation between vibrational anharmonicity and C mode frequency is universal to carbyne-like materials, including ideal carbyne. This establishes experimentally that carbyne and related materials have pronounced anharmonic potential landscapes which must be included in the theoretical description of their structure and properties.
ISSN:2041-1723