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Scientists have created the primary sizable meteorite diamond — also called lonsdaleite or hexagonal diamond — a fabric predicted to be even more durable than the diamonds usually discovered on Earth.
The high-pressure, high-temperature method created tiny disks of this ultrahard diamond which may in the end exchange standard diamonds in functions akin to drilling instruments and electronics, the scientists reported July 30 within the journal Nature.
In the 1960s, however, a subtly different structure of diamond was proposed, with small impure crystals of this structure subsequently discovered in the Canyon Diablo meteorite, which crashed in the Arizona desert around 50,000 years ago.
Unlike in cubic diamond, this form contains two different bond lengths — one slightly longer than in normal diamond and one slightly shorter. The carbon atoms are still organized into endless planes of tetrahedra. But this time, when viewed from the side, the structure contains only two repeating layers (labeled A and B). This slight shift in the carbon layers gives meteorite diamond a hexagonal structure, which scientists theorize should boost the solid’s hardness by 58%.
But making ready samples of this hexagonal construction massive sufficient to research has been difficult. What’s extra, the presence of different contaminating types of carbon within the authentic meteorite pattern — together with graphite, cubic diamond and amorphous carbon — led many to doubt whether or not hexagonal diamond exists in any respect.
Related: Why do diamonds come in several colours?
Inspired by the Canyon Diablo meteoric fragment, Wenge Yang and colleagues on the Center for High Pressure Science and Technology Advanced Research in Beijing, sought to breed the extraordinary circumstances of an influence with Earth within the lab, creating a high-pressure, high-temperature synthesis utilizing a diamond anvil cell, a bit of apparatus that squashes a pattern between two flattened surfaces made from diamond. Starting from one other type of carbon, purified graphite, they slowly and thoroughly compressed the fabric, fixing the shifted atoms in place with focused warmth from a laser.
“At pressures around 20 GPa (200,000 atmospheres), the flat carbon layers of graphite are forced to slide and bond with adjacent layers, forming a buckled carbon honeycomb characteristic of hexagonal diamond,” Yang advised Live Science in an electronic mail. “Laser heating above 1400 °C [2,552 Fahrenheit] facilitates this transition.” Once these distorted tetrahedra of hexagonal diamond had shaped, the staff slowly launched the strain, guaranteeing the brand new crystal did not spontaneously flip again into graphite.
The staff then used highly effective methods to view the crystal construction and ensure their achievement. Although the crystal disk remained considerably impure, containing random fragments of cubic diamond, electron microscope photos clearly confirmed its AB carbon layers, and X-ray crystallography revealed the hexagonal construction.
“It’s a good first demonstration,” mentioned Soumen Mandal, a physicist who specializes within the functions of diamond on the University of Cardiff within the U.Okay., who was not concerned within the research. “Now we need pure crystals and more material to start exploring its physical and mechanical properties, thermal properties, electric properties, all of these.”
Hardness testing typically requires bigger samples than those Yang’s staff produced, in line with the research. However, they did affirm the brand new materials was at the very least as powerful as common diamondsl and Yang hopes subsequent experiments with bigger and purer crystals will quickly present a concrete reply.
The staff would in the end prefer to see hexagonal diamond start to interchange standard diamond in industrial applied sciences akin to precision equipment, high-performance electronics, quantum applied sciences and thermal administration techniques, though such functions should be 10 years away.
“Looking forward, our goal is to produce larger, high-quality hexagonal diamond samples suitable for real-world applications,” he mentioned. “These efforts will help tailor hexagonal diamond’s properties for specific applications and pave the way for its industrial adoption.”
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