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Carbon rings push limits of chemical theories

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Przemysław Gaweł is at the Institute of Organic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, 01-224 Warsaw, Poland. Graphite Flow Channel

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Cina Foroutan-Nejad is at the Institute of Organic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, 01-224 Warsaw, Poland.

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Carbon has the ability to form a variety of covalent bonds, allowing it to adopt an extraordinary number of structural forms known as allotropes. Some of these, such as graphite and diamond, have been widely used for centuries. Others, including graphene, carbon nanotubes and fullerenes, have attracted attention over the past three decades because of their potentially revolutionary technological applications. In this issue, Gao et al.1 and Sun et al.2 report the synthesis and characterization of three new molecular forms of carbon. The findings shed fresh light on the much-debated properties and structures of all-carbon rings known as cyclocarbons.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-03575-5

Gao, Y. et al.Nature 623, 977–981 (2023).

Sun, L. et al.Nature 623, 972–976 (2023).

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Carbon Tray Nature (Nature) ISSN 1476-4687 (online) ISSN 0028-0836 (print)