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Magnetic carbon

Nature volume 413, pages 716–718 (2001)Cite this article

A Retraction to this article was published on 30 March 2006

A Corrigendum to this article was published on 25 August 2005

Abstract

The discovery of nanostructured forms of molecular carbon has led to renewed interest in the varied properties of this element. Both graphite and C60 can be electron-doped by alkali metals1 to become superconducting; transition temperatures of up to 52 K have been attained by field-induced hole-doping of C60 (ref. 2). Recent experiments3,4 and theoretical studies5,6 have suggested that electronic instabilities in pure graphite may give rise to superconducting and ferromagnetic properties, even at room temperature. Here we report the serendipitous discovery of strong magnetic signals in rhombohedral C60. Our intention was to search for superconductivity in polymerized C60; however, it appears that our high-pressure, high-temperature polymerization process results in a magnetically ordered state. The material exhibits features typical of ferromagnets: saturation magnetization, large hysteresis and attachment to a magnet at room temperature. The temperature dependences of the saturation and remanent magnetization indicate a Curie temperature near 500 K.

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Figure 1: Raman spectrum of magnetically ordered rhombohedral C60 polymer (Rh-C60).
Figure 2: Temperature dependence of the magnetic susceptibility of Rh-C60.
Figure 3: Hysteresis loops for Rh-C60.
Figure 4: Magnetization of Rh-C60 in a fixed applied field of 0.2 T (upper curve, triangles) and the remanent magnetization obtained at H = 0 T (lower curve, circles) as a function of temperature.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Blinc for discussions, W. Frech for help with impurity analysis, and A. L. Shelankov for comments on the manuscript. This work was done in the framework of a project supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (T.L.M.). Part of this work was supported by the DFG and FAPESP. B.S. thanks the Swedish Research Council for support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, St Petersburg, 194021, Russia

    Tatiana L. Makarova

  2. Department of Experimental Physics, Umeå University, Umeå, S-90187, Sweden

    Tatiana L. Makarova & Bertil Sundqvist

  3. Chemical Department, Institute for Physics, TU Ilmenau, Ilmenau, D-98693, Germany

    Tatiana L. Makarova & Peter Scharff

  4. Department for Superconductivity and Magnetism, Leipzig University, Leipzig, D-04103, Germany

    Roland Höhne & Pablo Esquinazi

  5. Instituto de Fisica, Unicamp, Campinas, 13083-970, Sao Paulo, Brazil

    Yakov Kopelevich

  6. Institute of High Pressure Physics, Troitsk, 142092, Russia

    Valerii A. Davydov, Ludmila S. Kashevarova & Aleksandra V. Rakhmanina

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  1. Tatiana L. Makarova
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Correspondence to Tatiana L. Makarova.

Supplementary information

41586_2001_BF35099527_MOESM1_ESM.mpg

Some of our samples show a sufficiently strong magnetisation that they can be lifted off a table surface using a small SmCo magnet (MPG 3835 kb)

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Makarova, T., Sundqvist, B., Höhne, R. et al. Magnetic carbon. Nature 413, 716–718 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35099527

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