Beta carbon nitride
Beta carbon nitride (C3N4) may be a peculiar interesting potential base material for gemstone based metamaterials. This is because (just as diamond and lonsdaleite) beta carbon nitride consists exclusively out of volatile and in earths atmosphere abundant elements.
When drawing atoms for building solid stuff from (thin) air carbon has a far lower concentration than nitrogen and thus is the limiting factor.
- CO2 0.0004 ( = 400 ppm and rising ) is by far the limiting factor. Nitrogen
- N2 0.7809 ( 78.09% )
Given four seventh (or let's call it just more than halve) of the carbon atoms can be replaced with easily attainable nitrogen the extraction speed can be more than doubled.
There are other volatile elements in the air like oxygen and sulphur but these are not suitable.
oxygen: It does not form solid low energy (aka nonexplosive) compounds with the other abundant volatile elements in the air.
sulphur: Sulfur oxides are even more dilute in presence than CO2 (except near an active volcanoe or environmentally hazardous industry), sulphur nitrides are interesting solids but not sable enough as a building material, the simplest sulphur carbide is CS2 and an (interesting) liquid.
(Crystalline) sulphur on its own is usable but it's a pretty weak and soft material (Mohs 2).
External Links
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_carbon_nitride
- Solid sulfur nitride inorganic polymer material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polythiazyl (manageably explosive) – oddball compounds
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrasulfur_tetranitride
