Essay On Carbon Allotrope

1255 Words6 Pages
Carbon exists in a number of allotropic forms. The existence of one element in a different manner, having different physical properties, but similar chemical behavior is known as allotropy (sederberg 2006). For example, diamond is the most known carbon allotrope (ibid). It is the hardest naturally occurring substance. On the other hand, graphite is the second carbon allotrope (ibid). It is a very soft material. Where is often used in lead pencils . The three best-known carbon allotropes are amorphous carbon, graphite, and diamond. Since the 1980s, scientists have been synthesizing newer allotropes, including carbon nanotubes, grapheme, glassy carbon, lonsdaleite, carbon nanobuds and fullerenes, all of which have had a significant scientific…show more content…
In addition, due to its extremely rigid lattice it can slightly be contaminated with impurity agent elements such as nitrogen. This is why some diamonds have hint of color on them. It is due to a slight impurity (ibid). The surface of diamond is lipophilic and hydrophobic, which means it cannot get wet by water but can be in oil as a result diamonds do not generally react with chemical reagents, including strong acids and bases (ibid) as a result; Diamond's hardness and high melting point makes it suitable for use as a cutting tools like those used to drill through rocks in the oil exploration industry, are made with diamonds so that they stay sharp for longer (ibid). Diamond also has a special optical characteristics such as high luster which is a result from reflecting diamond high percentage of light that strikes its surface, high index of refraction and high dispersion as shown in figure 2. These properties help make diamond the world’s most popular gemstone (stones with color that make them suitable for jewelry). However, those properties is also a major disadvantages when it comes to treating diamond because it require a very high temperature and pressure, expensive and produced only single crystal diamond
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