Invited Speaker
Prof. Mingguang Yao
Jilin University
E-mail: yaomg@jlu.edu.cn
Title: Exploring New Diamonds: High-Pressure Synthesis and Property Characterization
Profile:
Professor and Doctoral Supervisor, College of Physics
National Key Laboratory of High Pressure and Superhard Materials, Jilin University
His long-term research focuses on novel structures and properties of carbon materials under high pressure. He has made significant progress in understanding high-pressure structural transition mechanisms and developing new ultrahard carbon materials. His work, published as first/corresponding author in leading SCI journals including Nature, Nature Materials, Nature Communications, Advanced Materials, and Physical Review Letters (PRL), has been highlighted in Nature and JACS as "Research Highlights" and featured in Springer Nature monographs. His breakthrough on near-fully sp³ amorphous carbon was spotlighted by Nature as a "breakthrough in materials science".
He has received the First Prize of Jilin Province Natural Science Award (2018, 2024) and the First Prize of China Materials Research Society (C-MRS) Science and Technology Award (2022), among other honors. In 2022, he was awarded a Class A National Natural Science Foundation for Young Scientists (NSFC Young Scientist Fund).
Abstract:
The inherent challenges of diamond include brittleness, pronounced anisotropy, susceptibility to cleavage along crystalline planes, and bandgap engineering difficulties, etc. This presentation will introduce our group’s synthesis of high-quality transparent sp³ amorphous carbon bulk materials and hexagonal diamond. Utilizing our independently developed large-volume press ultrahigh-pressure technology, these novel ultrahard materials demonstrate breakthrough properties. The amorphous carbon achieves unprecedented performance among non-crystalline materials: a Vickers hardness of 102 GPa, Young’s modulus of 1182 GPa (rivaling diamond), thermal conductivity of ~30 W/mK, and tunable optical bandgap (1.8–2.7 eV). This material further exhibits superior formability and isotropy compared to diamond, coupled with exceptional optoelectronic properties, revealing substantial application value.