Liquid carbon, a material that could play a key role in future nuclear fusion reactors, has been made by a team of scientists for the first time.
A high-performance laser called DiPOLE 100-X, which was developed in the UK, was used to create the material at the European XFEL facility near Hamburg.
Due to its high melting point and unique structural properties, it is thought that liquid carbon could be useful in nuclear fusion plants as a way to cool the reactors and as a moderator that can help to slow down neutrons – a crucial way to maintain the chain reactions needed.
The D100-X laser created conditions that enabled the liquification of solid carbon samples for just billionths of a second, while an X-ray beam captured diffraction patterns that reveal the atomic arrangement in the liquid carbon.
While the experiment was incredibly short-lived, it was repeated many times with slightly different parameters to create various snapshots of the diffraction patterns. When combined, this allowed...