Scientists created a new carbon molecule for the second time ever

For the first time in 35 years, scientists have analysed a new type of all-carbon molecule at room temperature, without the extreme conditions usually required to stabilise this type of molecule

By Meagan Mulcair

14 August 2025

Researchers stabilised a ring-shaped carbon molecule by adding “bumpers” to protect its atoms

Harry Anderson

A new type of all-carbon molecule has been studied under normal room-temperature conditions. This marks only the second time this has ever been done, after spherical buckyballs were synthesised 35 years ago. The breakthrough could lead to extremely efficient materials for new electronic and quantum technologies.

Cyclic carbons, molecules made up of a ring of carbon atoms, could display bizarre chemical behaviour or conduct electricity in unusual ways – much like their all-carbon molecular cousins, buckyballs and nanotubes. But these rings are so delicate they usually fall apart, or in some cases even explode, before researchers have a chance to study them.

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“Cyclic carbons are intriguing molecules, and we’ve been trying to make them for a long time,” says Harry Anderson at the University of Oxford. Doing so has traditionally required extremely harsh conditions in order to keep the molecules around long enough to be studied. But Anderson and his colleagues found a way to stabilise cyclic carbons at room temperature.

The technique involves modifying a cyclic carbon. The researchers demonstrated this on a never-before-studied molecule: a ring of 48 carbon atoms, called cyclo[48]carbon, or C48. Anderson and his colleagues added “bumpers” to the C48, threading it through three smaller rings, to protect the 48 atoms from colliding with each other – or with other molecules.

“There’s no unnecessary decoration,” says Max von Delius at the University of Ulm in Germany. “There’s an absolute beauty in the simplicity.”