Article of Piotr Guńka, PhD, Eng. of Chair of Inorganic Chemistry describing predicting and synthesis of so-called „superdiamond” – carbon-boron clathrate which traps strontium atoms and that have unique physical properties – has just been published in the Science Advances (IF=12.804) journal. New "superdiamond" material is characterized by the hardness comparable to that of diamond and exchange of cations trapped in the anionic lattice vacancies allows to tune its electronic properties from semiconducting, through metallic to superconducting ones. Described compound was obtained under ca. 55 GPa pressure and ca. 2500 K temperature and is stable upon pressure decrease to atmospheric one and temperature decrease to the room one. Dr Guńka participated in developing model of the compound structure based on synchrotron X-ray diffraction during his scientific internship at Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science finances by the scholarship of The Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (Narodowa Agencja Wymiany Akademickiej, NAWA).

Link to the article and its popular science abstract.