00294 IUPAC Gold Book - amorphous carbon 10.1351/goldbook.A00294 A00294 current 1 A carbon material without long-range crystalline order. Short-range order exists, but with deviations of the interatomic distances and/or interbonding angles with respect to the graphite lattice as well as to the diamond lattice. The term amorphous carbon is restricted to the description of carbon materials with localized π-electrons as described by P. W. Anderson (Phys. Rev., 1958, 109, 1492). Deviations in the C–C distances greater than 5% (i.e. \(\frac{\Delta x}{x_{0}} > 0.05\), where \(x_{0}\) is the inter-atomic distance in the crystal lattice for the \(\rm{sp}^{2}\) as well as for the \(\rm{sp}^{2}\) configuration) occur in such materials, as well as deviations in the bond angles because of the presence of 'dangling bonds'. The above description of amorphous carbon is not applicable to carbon materials with two-dimensional structural elements present in all pyrolysis residues of carbon compounds as polyaromatic layers with a nearly ideal interatomic distance of \(a = 142\ \rm{pm}\) and an extension greater than \(1000\ \rm{pm}\). carbon material https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/C00841 diamond https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/D01671 diamond-like carbon films https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/D01673 graphite https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/G02684 pyrolysis https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/P04961 PAC, 1995, 67, 473. 'Recommended terminology for the description of carbon as a solid (IUPAC Recommendations 1995)' on page 477 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac199567030473) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/A00294/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/A00294/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/A00294/plain Citation: 'amorphous carbon' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.A00294 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-04-18T21:47:09+00:00