There are 3 naturally occurring allotropes of carbon which are amorphous, graphite and diamond and graphite is one of the softest material in human history and diamond is a hard material.
What is the difference?
There are 3 naturally occurring allotropes of carbon which are amorphous, graphite and diamond.?
December 24th, 2009 by admin Leave a reply »
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due to difference in bonding diamond is hard and graphite is soft,
Graphite has a sheet like structure, if you turn it on the side you can see the cleavages which represent the sheets in large scale. It’s structured so that each C atom forms three bonds with it’s neighbours in the lateral plane which leaves one site free and hence the sheets. The reason it is so soft is because the bonds between the layers are very weak.
Because of the pressure involved in the formation of diamonds, the C atoms are forced into a 3D lattice structure with each one forming 4 bonds (the maximum for Carbon). This means that you can’t easily break it along a single plane.