A team led by Rod Ruoff at the Institute of Basic Science (IBS) at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in South Korea has devised a groundbreaking method for creating diamonds in the lab without the need for extreme pressure.
According to the researchers, this method could simplify the production of longer films and larger diamond crystals, which find diverse applications in modern electronics and optics, as reported by Interesting Engineering.
Lab-grown diamonds are not a recent discovery. General Electric pioneered this process almost five decades ago using molten iron sulfide. This process replicates the conditions of the Earth's mantle, where diamonds naturally form, through the High-Pressure, High-Temperature (HPHT) method.
Diamonds form from liquid metal when temperatures soar to 2,552 degrees Fahrenheit (1400 degrees Celsius) and pressure exceeds five gigapascals (1 Pa = 10,000 atm).
An alternative method, chemical vapor deposition (CVD), is less sensitive to pressure but requires specialized equipment for semiconductor manufacturing.
Both methods typically utilize a diamond seed to initiate diamond formation. However, the UNIST team's method eliminates this requirement, allowing for diamond synthesis at standard atmospheric pressure.
Years ago, Ruoff observed that diamond synthesis might not necessarily require high pressures. A study in 2017 demonstrated that liquid gallium can dissolve carbon atoms and assemble them into solid sheets of graphene when exposed to methane gas.
Ruoff hypothesized that this process could also yield diamonds under suitable conditions and embarked on its development.
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