Graphene is as of now known for being amazingly strong, regardless of being only one atom thick. So how might it be made even stronger? By transforming it into sheets of the diamond, obviously. Scientists in South Korea have now built up a new strategy for changing over graphene into the thinnest diamond movies, without utilizing high pressure.

Graphene, graphite, and diamond are altogether made of similar stuff – carbon – yet the distinction between these materials is the manner by which the carbon atoms are arranged and bonded together. Graphene is a sheet of carbon that is only one atom thick, with strong bonds between them horizontally. Graphite is comprised of graphene sheets stacked over one another, with strong bonds within each sheet yet weak ones interfacing various sheets. Furthermore, in diamond, the carbon atoms are unquestionably more unequivocally connected in three dimensions, making an amazingly hard material.

At the point when the bonds between layers of graphene are strengthened, it can become a 2D form of diamond known as diamane. The issue is, this is ordinarily difficult to do. One way requires amazingly high pressures, and when that pressure is evacuated the material returns into graphene. Different investigations have added hydrogen molecules to the graphene, however that makes it hard to control the bonds.

For the new examination, analysts at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) and the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) swapped out hydrogen for fluorine. The thought is that by presenting bilayer graphene to fluorine, it brings the two layers nearer together, making stronger bonds between them.

The group began by making bilayer graphene utilizing the tried-and-true method of chemical vapor deposition (CVD), on a substrate made of copper and nickel. At that point, they presented the graphene to vapors of xenon difluoride. The fluorine in that mixture sticks to the carbon atoms, fortifying bonds between graphene layers and making an ultrathin layer of fluorinated diamond, known as F-diamane.

The new procedure is far less difficult than others, which should make it moderately simple to scale up. Ultrathin sheets of a diamond could make for stronger, smaller and more flexible electronic components, especially as a wide-gap semiconductor.

“This simple fluorination method works at near-room temperature and under low pressure without the use of plasma or any gas activation mechanisms, hence reduces the possibility of creating defects,” says Pavel V. Bakharev, first author of the study.