Bucknum, M. J. (2008). Methods of synthesizing the carbon allotrope glitter, USA .

In the carbon science literature, there were various reports over the previous few decades of potentially novel cryst. forms of carbon emerging as nanometer scale fragments recovered from the explosive remnants of heated, shock compressed graphite and other precursors of C. Two nanometric and cryst. forms of C that are particularly prominent in these studies are the so-called n-diamond and i-carbon forms. The commonly obsd. diffraction pattern of n-diamond nanocrystals is consistent with the calcd. diffraction pattern of a novel form of carbon called glitter. Glitter is a tetragonal allotrope of carbon with a calcd. d. of ∼3.08 g/cm3, and the d. functional theory (DFT-CASTEP) optimized lattice parameters given as a = 0.2560 and c = 0.5925 nm. In addn. to the diffraction evidence for n-diamond having the glitter structure, the calcd. band structure of glitter (DFT-CASTEP) shows it to be metallic, like the obsd. elec. characteristics of n-diamond.