The synthesis of red carbon thin films relies on the use of a test tube, containing a solid mixture of the precursors, malonic acid (MA) and phosphorus pentoxide (P2O5), which is placed horizontally in a muffle furnace at 160°C with a glass slide used as a target substrate. At this temperature, P2O5 is able to double-dehydrate malonic acid, creating the carbon suboxide gas, by removing the hydroxyl groups and the α-hydrogens, which are significantly more acidic in β-diketo compounds then monoketo compounds. Furthermore, as it was previously reported, pure MA, at about the operating temperature, undergoes thermal β-decarboxylation via rearrangement in a cyclic six-membered transition state to acetic acid and CO2. After the thermal treatment, the glass substrate is successfully coated with an deep-red film, which resembles the color described in previous reports on red carbon materials. Surprisingly, to the best of our knowledge, the optical absorption and emission properties were reported only once by Yang et al. which however are considered not comparable due to the unusual low temperatures conditions used (140°C). In the present case, the red color is confirmed by the absorption spectrum (Fig 2 ), where the red carbon thin film presents an absorption maximum at 363 nm with a long shoulder over a wide range of the visible spectrum, and at footing to about 600 nm. From the spectrum, we derived an optical bandgap of about 2.1 eV using the Tauc plot method. Furthermore, the red carbon films present an intense The analysis reveals, qualitatively, that the film is mostly composed of carbon and allegedly a low contribution of oxygen. Furthermore, the silicon EDX mapping shows that the film is homogeneous without cracks and holes, since a high intensity signal for the silicon occurs only where the film has been removed during the sample preparation. The analysis also confirms the absence of phosphorus contamination the peak of which (P-K) usually occurs at about 2 keV (SI). In order to obtain preliminary information on the material structure, the red carbon films were analyzed by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) (Fig ). The spectrum confirms the presence of carbonyl-containing groups, occurring at 1728 cm -1 (Fig ) is attributed to ester-like functionalities and, at lower frequencies, a wide band attributed to aromatic ring stretches appears (SI), with a minor contribution from allene and ketene groups (doublet at 1980-2030, and 2180 cm -1 , respectively). The XRD results reveal a highly ordered short range structure, with seven main sharp peaks at 6.3, 9.5, 12.5, 18.8, 25.1, 28.7, and 31.6° (2θ) (Fig X ). Such sharp and well defined peaks, which in turn reveal a very high crystalline order, are seldomly reported for organic polymer materials. Few examples of comparably high ordered structures were recently reported for poly(fantrip), polyimides, (polyaramides/oriented polyethylene/PTFE). At the nanoscale, the red carbon film reveal a well-organized onion-like structure with a well-defined diffraction pattern, which resembles the cyclic structure proposed by Kerek et al. Additional information, on the chemical structure are obtained by means of XPS. EELS reveals the presence of a strongly conjugated backbone, resembling the graphite pattern, although with a topological structure analogous to curved carbon materials, such as nanotube, glassy carbon, and carbon black. To provide real insights into the chemical structure, we performed XPS and deconvoluted the relative peaks, to obtain the chemical composition and relative chemical bonding scheme. It is worth noticing that also in the full spectrum XPS, we didn't find any phosphorus contamination and the elaboration of the spectra allows for defining the relative atomic composition as C/O=5 : 1. The C1s spectrum shows the presence of five different bonding scheme present in the material, with a significant majority of C=C bonds with sp 2 hybridization (at 285.2 eV), which account for the 58.4% of the total C bonds.