A team of Scientists from Australia and US have created two types of Diamond – Regular Diamond and Diamond-like phase Lonsdaleite.
Natural diamonds are formed over billions of years at a depth of 150kms from the earth surface. The pressure and temperature (above 1000 degree Celsius) at this depth can be very high according to Professor Jodie Bradby. He is a researcher in the Research School of Physics at the Australian National University.
Professor Bradby, RMIT Professor Dougal McCulloch and their colleagues used advanced electron microscopy techniques in the new study.
Lonsdaleite is named in honor of Dame Kathleen Lonsdale (nee Yardley) a crystallographer who established the structure of benzene by X-ray diffraction methods in 1929. She also worked on the synthesis of diamonds, and was a pioneer in the use of X-rays to study crystals.
Diamond due to its extreme hardness, high thermal conductivity, quantum optical and biomedical applications, is an attractive material. We are yet to know a lot more about how diamonds are formed particularly at room temperature without the help of catalysts.
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