A diamond full of holes: the new carbon material made where two liquids meet
What happened
Researchers at the University of Gothenburg have made a new form of carbon, and published the work in the journal Angewandte Chemie on 14 September 2026. They call it diamondiyne. The team was led by Professor Karl Borjesson, working with colleagues at Stockholm University and Chalmers University of Technology. Carbon is a strange element. Depending on how its atoms are arranged, the same element gives you the graphite in a pencil, the diamond in a ring, or the graphene that has kept materials scientists busy for twenty years. These different arrangements are called allotropes. Diamondiyne is a new one. Its carbon atoms are arranged in tetrahedra - four-cornered pyramid shapes - joined corner to corner, much like in diamond. But unlike diamond, there are gaps between them. It is a three-dimensional carbon structure full of voids. A diamond with holes in it. The way it was made is arguably the more interesting part. Real diamonds form under enormous pressure, deep underground, and synthetic ones need machines that recreate those conditions. Diamondiyne does not. It forms as a thin film at the boundary where two liquids meet, using what the university describes as relatively inexpensive equipment. The carbon atoms link up through triple bonds, which is what builds the structure without needing crushing pressure. 'It has taken us an incredibly long time, but we finally succeeded. I am very pleased,' Professor Borjesson said.
Why this matters
Porous materials are quietly useful. Anything with a lot of internal space and a lot of internal surface can hold things, sort things, or speed up chemical reactions. That is why porous materials turn up in water filters, in gas storage, in catalytic converters, and in the cartridges used to purify things in laboratories and factories. The more surface you can pack into a small volume, the better those jobs get done. Carbon-based porous materials are attractive because carbon tends to be chemically stable and is not a scarce or conflict-prone element. Professor Borjesson makes an intriguing suggestion about this particular structure: because it is full of voids, several diamondiyne structures could potentially be interwoven through each other's empty space, like two lattices threaded together. Whether that turns out to be useful or just elegant is not yet known. The manufacturing route matters too. A material that forms at a liquid boundary with ordinary equipment is far easier to scale up than one that needs a high-pressure press. Cheap and simple is often what decides whether a laboratory curiosity ever becomes anything.
What the evidence actually says
This is a synthesis paper. That means the achievement is making the thing, not proving it does a job. The researchers have created the material and characterised its structure, and Angewandte Chemie is a serious peer-reviewed chemistry journal. That part is solid. What has not been shown is what diamondiyne is good for. The team says plainly that they plan further investigation into its properties and applications. There are no filtration results, no storage capacities, no strength measurements in the announcement. Those come later, if they come at all. It is also a thin film, not a lump. Films are how many new materials first appear, and getting from a film to a useful quantity of material is often the hardest part of the whole story. The history of new carbon materials is worth remembering. Graphene was isolated in 2004 and won a Nobel Prize in 2010, and was widely predicted to transform everything within a decade. Twenty years on, it is genuinely used in some products, but the revolution has been far slower and narrower than the early coverage suggested. New carbon allotropes are announced fairly regularly. Most stay in laboratories. None of that makes this less of an achievement. A structure chemists have theorised about for years has now actually been made. That is the news. What it does is a question for the next few years.
What to know
Chemists at the University of Gothenburg, with colleagues at Stockholm University and Chalmers, have created diamondiyne: a new form of carbon with a diamond-like tetrahedral structure that is full of voids. It was published in Angewandte Chemie on 14 September 2026. It was made as a thin film at the interface between two liquids, using relatively inexpensive equipment rather than the extreme pressures that diamond normally requires. That route could make it far easier to scale up than many exotic materials. Porous carbon materials have real uses in filtration, gas storage and catalysis, so there are sensible reasons to be interested. But no applications have been demonstrated yet, and the researchers are clear that studying its properties comes next. For now it is a genuine piece of chemistry: something long theorised, finally made. Sources: Angewandte Chemie (Wiley), 'Diamondiyne' study from the University of Gothenburg, 14 September 2026, DOI 10.1002/anie.4062963, https://doi.org/10.1002/anie.4062963. EurekAlert / University of Gothenburg, 'New porous diamond created by researchers', 17 September 2026, https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1144095. University of Gothenburg, https://www.gu.se/en. This article is for general information and does not replace advice from a doctor, pharmacist or other qualified healthcare professional.
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