Topological defects—extended lattice deformations that are robust against local defects and annealing—have been exploited to engineer novel properties in both hard and soft materials. Yet, their formation kinetics and nanoscale three-dimensional structure are poorly understood, impeding their benefits for nanofabrication. We describe the fabrication of a pair of topological defects in the volume of a single-diamond network (space group Fd \(\bar{3}\)m) templated into gold from a triblock terpolymer crystal. Using X-ray nanotomography, we resolve the three-dimensional structure of nearly 70,000 individual single-diamond unit cells with a spatial resolution of 11.2 nm, allowing analysis of the long-range order of the network. The defects observed morphologically resemble the comet and trefoil patterns of equal and opposite half-integer topological charges observed in liquid crystals. Yet our analysis of strain in the network suggests typical hard matter behaviour. Our analysis approach does not require a priori knowledge of the expected positions of the nodes in three-dimensional nanostructured systems, allowing the identification of distorted morphologies and defects in large samples.

拓扑缺陷（对局部缺陷和退火具有鲁棒性的扩展晶格变形）已被用于设计硬质和软质材料的新特性。然而，人们对它们的形成动力学和纳米级三维结构知之甚少，阻碍了它们在纳米制造中的优势。我们描述了在单金刚石网络（空间群 Fd\（\bar{3}\）m）的体积中制造一对拓扑缺陷，该缺陷从三嵌段三元聚合物晶体模板化成金。使用 X 射线纳米断层扫描，我们以 11.2 nm 的空间分辨率解析了近 70,000 个单独的单金刚石晶胞的三维结构，从而可以分析网络的长程顺序。观察到的缺陷在形态上类似于在液晶中观察到的相等和相反的半整数拓扑电荷的彗星和三叶草图案。然而，我们对网络中应变的分析表明了典型的硬物质行为。我们的分析方法不需要先验了解三维纳米结构系统中节点的预期位置，从而可以识别大样品中的扭曲形态和缺陷。