Stretching a carbon-atom chain a million times its natural length turns it from a metal into a semiconductor - a discovery announced by an international team of researchers based mainly in China whose theoretical investigations were confirmed later by real-world observations made by an independent Australian group. Theoretical work predicted the phase transition for carbon allotropes with different configurations, including cumulene C and linear acetylenic carbon (LAC).

While carbon materials such as graphene and carbon nanotubes have dominated in electronic and energy storage technologies, a team co-led by Yang Chen at East China University of Science and Technology and Jin Zhang from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in Shanghai (both China) investigated theoretically the unique chain-like carbon allotrope, carbyne, which had long eluded experimentalists because of its high instability.