IPFS News Link • Science, Medicine and Technology
Stanford scientists find a new way to turn graphite into diamond
• http://www.gizmag.com, By Dario BorghinoThe excellent hardness, mechanical strength and thermal conductivity of diamonds means they have a wide range of scientific and industrial applications. Their uses range from heat sinks that cool down electronic components to "anvil cells" used to synthesize specific materials.
Synthetic diamonds are normally built by taking graphite (the material used for pencil leads, which is simply a stack of graphene layers) and applying extremely high pressures, on the order of 150 thousand atmospheres. The immense forces exerted on the graphene sheets are enough to reconfigure their atomic structure into a much more stable, diamond-like form.