(IDEX Online) - A research team based in Australia has successfully produced diamonds for the first time at room temperature.
Lab-grown diamonds require high pressure and temperatures of 800C, but scientists say they have created diamonds in the lab with no heat, and in a matter of minutes.
The manufacturing method mimics the violent impact of meteorites on Earth, which is known to have created diamonds, as well as in processes such as high-speed asteroid collisions in our solar system - the source of so-called "extra-terrestrial diamonds".
Prof Dougal McCulloch, at RMIT University, Melbourne, and Prof Jodie Bradby, at Australian National University,say they've produced two types of diamond - some with carbon atoms arranged in a "normal" cubic crystalline structure and others with a hexagonal crystal structure called Lonsdaleite.
Naturally-occurring Lonsdaleite has been found at the Canyon Diablo meteorite crater, in Arizona, USA, and is said to be 58 per cent harder than regular diamond.
"Our research shows both Lonsdaleite and regular diamond can be formed at room temperature in a lab setting, by just applying high pressures," say the professors, who have just published their findings in a paper entitled Investigation of Room Temperature Formation of the Ultraâ€Hard Nanocarbons Diamond and Lonsdaleite.
Pic courtesy RMIT University...