Scientists create diamonds at room temperature in minutes

(CNN) – Diamonds may be forever, but that doesn’t mean they have to take eons to form.

Gems are usually created after carbon has been shattered and heated far below the earth’s surface for billions of years, which is what makes them so coveted.

Now, scientists in Australia say they have accelerated the process in minutes and at room temperature.

An international team of researchers led by the Australian National University (ANU) and RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, said on Wednesday they had created two types of diamonds at room temperature using high pressure equivalent to 640 African elephants balancing at the tip. of a dance shoe. .

The researchers said they were able to create two structurally distinct types of diamonds: one similar to those typically worn in jewelry and another type called Lonsdaleite, which occurs naturally at the site of meteorite impacts and is harder than most. of diamonds.

Synthetic diamonds are not new in their own right and have already been created in the laboratory since the 1940s in an effort to find cheaper, ethical and environmentally friendly stones.

But the researchers were excited to create such diamonds at room temperature, especially the harder Lonsdaleite diamond, which has the potential to be used to cut “ultra-solid” materials at mining sites, they said.

“Creating more of this rare but super useful diamond is the long-term goal of this work,” said Xingshuo Huang, an ANU scholar working on the project. “Being able to make two types of diamonds at room temperature was exciting to get in our lab for the first time.”

Lab-grown diamonds are usually created from carbon subjected to intense heat.

An enormous rotation and sliding force

To form the diamonds, the researchers applied tremendous pressure to create a “twisting or sliding force” that they believe caused the carbon atoms to move, said Jodie Bradby, a physics professor at ANU.

“Natural diamonds usually form over billions of years, about 150 kilometers (about 93 miles) deep in the Earth where there are high pressures and temperatures in excess of 1,000 degrees Celsius (1,832 degrees Fahrenheit),” he said. “The turning point in history is the way we apply the pressure.”

Dougal McCulloch, a professor of physics at RMIT who co-led the research, and his team then used advanced electron microscopy techniques to take slices from the experimental samples to better understand how they formed.

When the team studied the samples, they found regular diamond veins and Lonsdaleite flowing through.

“Seeing these little ‘rivers’ of Lonsdaleite and regular diamonds for the first time was just amazing and really helps us understand how they might form,” McCulloch said.

Researchers from the University of Sydney and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, in the United States, were also involved in the research.

This story was first published on CNN.com Scientists create diamonds at room temperature in minutes