Variable temperature transmission electron microscopy of individual 5 nm Au nanoparticles shows a striking increase in the particle size on raising the temperature from room temperature to 500°C in the presence of carbon from amorphous carbon support. Using the assembly of ordered graphene shells on the surface of individual nanoparticles at elevated temperatures-and the high pressures induced by such shells-as an experimental tool to study the origins of this swelling, we find that the volume increase is associated with the uptake of carbon to concentrations exceeding the bulk solubility by more than four orders of magnitude. The formation of stable metalcarbon nanostructures that have no bulk equivalent may have important implications on the functional properties of metal nanoparticles.The interaction of carbon with transition metals is key to processes for synthesizing the known sp 2 bonded carbon allotropes-fullerenes, nanotubes, and graphene-all of which are materials showing extraordinary properties and enormous potential for applications.Graphene, a planar two-dimensional honeycomb lattice of sp 2 bonded carbon atoms [1] Typically, transition metals catalytically dissociate hydrocarbons at their surfaces to set free carbon adatoms, which can be absorbed into the bulk at high temperature and segregate to the surface on subsequent cooling to form sp 2 -bonded structures. Planar graphene is synthesized by this process on bulk crystals or thin films of transition metals, such as Ru [16][17][18], Pt [19], Ir [20], and Ni [21], which can take up carbon into interstitial sites with solubilities up to a few atomic percent. Carbon nanostructures, such as fullerenes [22][23][24][25] are synthesized over transition metal (Fe, Ni, Co) nanoparticles, using the same steps of hydrocarbon dissociation, carbon intake into interstitial sites, and precipitation. It is generally assumed that the uptake of carbon in metal nanoparticles involves interstitial sites, similar to the bulk, but the stable concentrations (i.e., the carbon solubility) may be different at the nanoscale. The high surface-to-volume ratio of nanoparticles has been predicted to cause a significant increase of the solubility [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. However, lattice relaxation in very small particles Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article