A group of scientists from two universities in China have created an ultra-hard, high-quality ‘super diamond’ in the lab that is many times stronger than naturally occurring diamonds.
The team responsible for the breakthrough believes their creation could have applications in key sectors, as diamonds are already widely utilized in industries like cutting and polishing tools. While most natural and synthetic diamonds have a cubic structure, ultra-hard diamonds, known as lonsdaleite, have a hexagonal crystal structure.
Until now, the hardest diamonds were found only in impact craters, making them both rare and small. However, researchers from Jilin University, led by Liu Bingbing and Yao Mingguang—along with Zhu Shengcai from Sun Yat-sen University in Shenzhen— have found that graphite formed a structure called the ‘post-graphite phase’.
This resulted in the formation of a hexagonal diamond when compressed and heated under extremely high pressure. The findings of the team have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Materials earlier this month.
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