Help: Single Crystal Graphite

Several mineral dealers. Just ask

mineral dealers. Pure, perfect single XX should be difficult to select.

J.J.

We got pyrolytic graphite from Union Carbide. Maybe they do single cystals, too. Maybe not, single crystal graphite seems hard to find. Google on

"single crystal graphite" suppliers

and try

and start making some phone calls.

Mineral dealers sell natural graphite crystals in rocks from Buckingham, Quebec.

I got fine samples from WARD.

J.J.

Hi Kywen,

No one has ever seen a perfect crystal of graphite, with the naked eye at least. Pyrolitic graphite is not perfect graphite, it is loaded with defects and impuritys.

If you had a cubic chunk of a perfect graphite crystal it would be a perfect optical reflector on two of it's faces and a perfectly black optical absorber on the remaining 4 faces. the sides would be so dark that even under intense light there would be no specular reflection and no diffusion whatsoever. the outer faces would be featureless. It's tensile strenght would be over 70Gpa in the x-y plane and less than

50Mpa in the z plane. It's hardness would still be less than soapstone. It would be the wierdest looking substance ever.