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The billion-year wait for the perfect spark is over after an Australian-led science team discovered how to make diamonds in minutes.
The process is thought to take ages, enormous amounts of pressure and super-hot temperatures, hundreds of kilometers below the earth’s crust.
But researchers from Australian National University and RMIT have discovered how to crystallize carbon into diamonds in a laboratory at room temperature.
“It all depends on how we apply the pressure – we allow the carbon to experience something called ‘shear’ – which is like a torsion or creep force,” physicist Jodie Bradby told AAP.
“We think this allows the carbon atoms to move into position forming both lonsdaleite and regular diamonds, such as those found on engagement rings.
“We’re not doing it into something super amazing or explosive. We just squeeze the material together with extreme pressure.
“It all happens in minutes.”
The team has already created lonsdaleite, which is 58% harder than regular diamonds, at high temperatures.
They hope their turn against nature will allow them to develop ultra-hard diamond for industrial use in cutting tools such as those found at mining sites.
“Any process at room temperature is much easier and cheaper to design than a process that you have to run at several hundred or thousands of degrees,” said Prof. Bradby.
“Unfortunately I don’t think it will mean cheaper diamonds for engagement rings.
“But our lonsdaleite diamonds could become a miner’s best friend if we can keep them from changing expensive drill bits often.”
The team’s research findings on room temperature diamonds were published in Small magazine.
Australian Associated Press
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