Discover the First Ever Bulk Production of Superhard Hexagonal Diamonds in Meteorites!

Scientists from China and the U.S. claim they have successfully created significant amounts of hexagonal diamonds, a discovery that could change what we know about hardness in materials. These diamonds have been sought after for over six decades due to their impressive potential strength.

Hexagonal diamonds, unlike their more common cubical counterparts, are arranged in a hexagonal structure. This design could mean they resist breaking more than cubic diamonds, as they don’t have the same weak points. The traditional hardness scale sets diamonds at the top, but some scientists believe there are structures, like wurtzite boron nitride and lonsdaleite, that might be even tougher. However, these materials have only been found in very small quantities, making them hard to study.

Earlier this year, researchers at Jilin University in China announced a method to create hexagonal diamonds from graphite. However, their results were limited. Now, Professor Ho-kwang Mao and his team have produced hexagonal diamond crystals that are up to one millimeter in size. They did this by applying extreme pressure and heat to high-quality graphite. This advancement makes it possible to measure the hardness of these new diamonds against traditional cubic diamonds using the Vickers hardness scale.

Interestingly, while these new diamonds are primarily hexagonal, they still contain tiny traces of cubic diamonds, which may limit their hardness. This relationship suggests that there is still much to learn about the true potential of hexagonal diamonds compared to cubic diamonds.

We first discovered a natural version of these diamonds in the Canyon Diablo meteorite, which likely formed under immense pressure from an asteroid impact. However, as with the lab-created variants, these findings often come mixed with other materials, making it challenging to assess their true properties.

The journey to create bulk amounts of lonsdaleite even led to the discovery of graphene in 2004—a material that has shown remarkable promise in various applications. Understanding hexagonal diamonds could lead to developing superhard materials and advanced electronic devices.

Although this research is promising, there are questions about the practicality of hexagonal diamonds in real-world applications. If their hardness surpasses that of cubic diamonds only slightly and if production costs remain high, their use in specialized settings may be limited.

The study, which details these findings, has been published in Nature. You can explore more about these discoveries and their implications here.

For more context on the discovery of lonsdaleite and its unique properties, check out this source. The exploration into hexagonal diamonds represents not just a scientific achievement but a potential leap forward in creating materials with incredible strength and utility.

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