Although diamond is the hardest material for cutting tools, poor thermal stability has limited its applications, especially at high temperatures. Simultaneous improvement of the hardness and thermal stability of diamond has long been desirable. According to the Hall-Petch effect, the hardness of diamond can be enhanced by nanostructuring (by means of nanograined and nanotwinned microstructures), as shown in previous studies. However, for well-sintered nanograined diamonds, the grain sizes are technically limited to 10-30 nm (ref. 3), with degraded thermal stability compared with that of natural diamond. Recent success in synthesizing nanotwinned cubic boron nitride (nt-cBN) with a twin thickness down to ∼3.8 nm makes it feasible to simultaneously achieve smaller nanosize, ultrahardness and superior thermal stability. At present, nanotwinned diamond (nt-diamond) has not been fabricated successfully through direct conversions of various carbon precursors (such as graphite, amorphous carbon, glassy carbon and C60). Here we report the direct synthesis of nt-diamond with an average twin thickness of ∼5 nm, using a precursor of onion carbon nanoparticles at high pressure and high temperature, and the observation of a new monoclinic crystalline form of diamond coexisting with nt-diamond. The pure synthetic bulk nt-diamond material shows unprecedented hardness and thermal stability, with Vickers hardness up to ∼200 GPa and an in-air oxidization temperature more than 200 °C higher than that of natural diamond. The creation of nanotwinned microstructures offers a general pathway for manufacturing new advanced carbon-based materials with exceptional thermal stability and mechanical properties.

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Cubic boron nitride (cBN) is a well known superhard material that has a wide range of industrial applications. Nanostructuring of cBN is an effective way to improve its hardness by virtue of the Hall-Petch effect--the tendency for hardness to increase with decreasing grain size. Polycrystalline cBN materials are often synthesized by using the martensitic transformation of a graphite-like BN precursor, in which high pressures and temperatures lead to puckering of the BN layers. Such approaches have led to synthetic polycrystalline cBN having grain sizes as small as ∼14 nm (refs 1, 2, 4, 5). Here we report the formation of cBN with a nanostructure dominated by fine twin domains of average thickness ∼3.8 nm. This nanotwinned cBN was synthesized from specially prepared BN precursor nanoparticles possessing onion-like nested structures with intrinsically puckered BN layers and numerous stacking faults. The resulting nanotwinned cBN bulk samples are optically transparent with a striking combination of physical properties: an extremely high Vickers hardness (exceeding 100 GPa, the optimal hardness of synthetic diamond), a high oxidization temperature (∼1,294 °C) and a large fracture toughness (>12 MPa m(1/2), well beyond the toughness of commercial cemented tungsten carbide, ∼10 MPa m(1/2)). We show that hardening of cBN is continuous with decreasing twin thickness down to the smallest sizes investigated, contrasting with the expected reverse Hall-Petch effect below a critical grain size or the twin thickness of ∼10-15 nm found in metals and alloys.

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Synthesis of acrolein by catalytic gas-phase dehydration of biomass-derivate glycerol was studied over various solid catalysts with a wide range of acid-base properties. The catalyst acidity and basicity were measured, respectively, by n-butylamine and benzoic acid titration methods using Hammett indicators. The most effective acid strength for the selective dehydration of glycerol to form acrolein appeared between 28.2 ¡ H 0 ¡ 23.0, with which acrolein was produced at a selectivity of 60-70 mol%. The catalysts having very strong acid sites (H 0 ¡ 28.2) effected a lower acrolein selectivity (40-50 mol%) due to more severe coke deposition in the reaction. Solid acids holding medium strong and weak acid sites (23.0 ¡ H 0 ¡ +6.8) were found to be not selective for the acrolein production, the acrolein selectivity being less than 30 mol%. The mass specific catalytic rate for the acrolein production showed a general trend to increase with the fractional acidity at 28.2 ¡ H 0 ¡ 23.0. The catalytic data also suggest that Brønsted acid sites were advantageous over Lewis acid sites in catalyzing the selective synthesis of acrolein from glycerol dehydration. Solid base catalysts were shown not to be effective for acrolein production.