Novel Rhenium Carbides at 200 GPa

Laser heating of rhenium in a diamond anvil cell to 3000 +/- 300 K at about 200 GPa results in formation of two previously unknown rhenium carbides, hexagonal WC-type structured ReC and orthorhombic TiSi2-type structured ReC2. The shortest C-C distances [1.758(3) angstrom at 219(5) GPa and 1.850(4) angstrom at 180(7) GPa] found in honeycomb-like carbon nets in the structure of ReC2 are quite unusual. The Re-C solid solution formed at multimegabar pressure has the carbon content of approximate to 20 at%.
Funding Agencies|Federal Ministry of Education and Research, Germany (BMBF)Federal Ministry of Education & Research (BMBF) [5K16WC1, 05K19WC1]; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)German Research Foundation (DFG) [DU 954-11/1, DU 393-9/2, DU 393-13/1]; Swedish Government Strategic Research Area in Materials Science on Functional Materials at Linkoping University (Faculty Grant SFO-Mat-LiU) [2009 00971]