An international team of researchers has been able, for the first time, to manufacture two different types of diamonds at room temperature in a short time.

This achievement will open the way to the manufacture of the toughest materials on Earth on a larger scale without the need for heating up to thousands of degrees Celsius as required by the technologies adopted so far.

Between graphite and diamond

Diamonds have been known to form naturally deep in the earth from carbon atoms over billions of years.

This process requires environments with exceptionally high pressure and temperatures exceeding 1,000 ° C.

But carbon atoms in nature can bond with each other in a number of ways to form different materials, including fine black graphite and solid transparent diamonds.

There are also forms of carbon bonding that form materials similar to graphite, such as graphene, for example, and others that lead to the formation of diamond materials such as "Lonsdaleite", similar to ordinary diamonds, with a slight difference, which is that the arrangement of atoms in the regular crystal structure is cubic while in Lonsdaleite Hexagonal.

Today, regular and lonsdalite diamonds, whose hardness is up to 58% of the hardness of ordinary diamonds, are manufactured using a process that simulates natural conditions inside the earth's crust, with the addition of mineral catalysts to accelerate the growth process, or by a chemical gas process that uses fine diamond particles as a "seed" To grow bigger diamonds.

Both processes require very high temperatures, high pressure, and a long time to obtain the desired product.

However, scientists have also noted that there are different natural ways diamonds form, including during the violent collision of meteorites on Earth, as well as in other processes such as the collision of high-speed asteroids in our solar system.

These are methods in which slip forces (also known as "shear" forces) play an important role in stimulating the formation of this extremely tough material.

Microscopic images of a river of diamonds in a sea of ​​Lonsdaleite (RMIT University)

At room temperature

In the new study, published in Small, a team of researchers from RMIT University and the Australian National University, in cooperation with the University of Sydney and AUC Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the United States, from the manufacture of diamond and lonsdaleite in a new way that only requires a few minutes and at room temperature.

According to a statement published on the RMIT University website about the results of the study, the researchers exposed a small strip of graphite-like carbon to intense shear forces and high pressures exceeding 80 gigapascals (equivalent to placing 640 elephants on a delicate heel), to stimulate the formation of diamonds.

In contrast to previous experiments in this field, in the new experiment no additional heating was applied to the carbon sample during pressure.

The high-resolution images captured by the researchers using an advanced electron microscope showed the formation of regular diamonds and lonsdaleite in the resulting sample.

The diamonds in the photos appeared to be a thin "river" about 200 times smaller than a human hair, surrounded by a "sea" of Lonsdaleite, according to the statement.

The new technology is good news for the industries that use diamonds to coat drilling tools and blades (Pixabay)

Researchers say the ability to make diamonds at room temperature, in a matter of minutes, opens up several manufacturing possibilities, specifically, making lonsdaleite much harder than regular diamonds.

In this way, this new technology is good news for industries that require extremely tough materials, such as industries that use diamonds to encase drilling tools and blades to extend their service life.

"The next challenge for us is to reduce the pressure required to form diamonds," said lead author Dougal McCulloch from RMIT University. "If both diamonds and lonsdaleite can be manufactured under low pressures, then we can produce more of it faster and cheaper."