Phase transformations of carbon under extreme energy action

Experiments are performed on a high-current MIG generator (current amplitude 2.5 MA, current rise time 100 ns) to synthesize diamond-like carbon forms. Magnetohydrodynamic calculations carried out before the experiments show that the conditions required for synthesizing diamond-like structures appear during the compression of copper tubes 2–4 mm in diameter filled with graphite. The explosion products are analyzed on an EM-125 diffraction transmission electron microscope. During an explosion, the entire graphite is found to transform into cubic carbon: crystals with the simple cubic lattice and a lattice parameter $a$ = 0.5545 nm and with the face-centered cubic lattice and $a$ = 0.3694 nm are detected. The crystallite size is 5–25 nm.