Scientists Grow Bigger, Better Diamonds
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Strange News
Scientists Grow Bigger, Better Diamonds
By Andrea Thompson, Senior Writer
posted: 27 October 2008 05:03 pm ET
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Diamonds such as these grown in the laboratory using a chemical vapor deposition process can be treated by a new high temperature, low pressure method to improve their color and optical clarity. Credit: Carnegie Institution for Science
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Diamonds such as these grown in the laboratory using a chemical vapor deposition process can be treated by a new high temperature, low pressure method to improve their color and optical clarity. Credit: Carnegie Institution for Science
If you thought that rock on the ring in the window of Tiffany's was big and beautiful, the diamonds treated in labs with a newly-developed method will really blow you away.
Diamond, a particular form of pure carbon, is of course used for more than adding sparkle to jewelry. It is also used for making scalpel blades, electronic components, and even quantum computers.
But the very properties of diamond that make it perfect for these uses — its hardness (it's the hardest known naturally-occurring mineral), optical clarity and resistance to chemicals, radiation and electrical fields — can also make it a difficult substance to work with.
Defects can be purged from diamond by a heating process called annealing, but this process can turn diamond into graphite, another form, or allotrope, of carbon that is soft and gray and used in pencil leads.
To prevent graphitization, diamond treatments have previously required using high pressures (up to 60,000 times atmospheric pressure, or the pressure we experience at sea level) during the annealing process, but such high pressure/high temperature processes are expensive and put limits on the size and amounts of diamonds that can be treated.
A team of scientists at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., have found away to get around these issues — and make bigger, better diamonds.
[Credit: Andrea Thompson, LiveScience; Photo: Carnegie Institution for Science]
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So what will this mean for the diamond industry?
