Chinese scientists have come up with a way to create a high-quality “super diamond” in the laboratory with a hardness far exceeding natural diamonds.
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The researchers behind the development say it could have industrial applications in some key sectors, with diamonds already widely used in industrial areas such as cutting and polishing tools.
Most natural and synthetic diamonds have a cubic structure but ultra-hard diamonds, also known as lonsdaleite, have a hexagonal crystal structure.
Previously, the hardest diamonds were found only in impact craters, making them very rare and small.
The first ultra-hard diamond was found in the Canyon Diablo meteorite in Arizona in 1967.
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Scientists have struggled to recreate lonsdaleite in the laboratory but now, a team of Chinese researchers have engineered a way to synthesise “well-crystallised, nearly pure” hexagonal diamonds from graphite.