SUPERHARD artificial diamonds have been produced in a day, almost from thin air. “To our knowledge, they are the hardest crystals of diamond ever reported,” says Russell Hemley, supervisor of the team which produced the diamonds at the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC.
Tests showed that the new crystals were about 50 per cent harder than a selection of synthetic and natural diamonds. And at up to 5 millimetres thick, they are also the largest single gem crystals ever produced from a process called chemical vapour deposition. Whereas most existing diamonds made this way are films no thicker than a…
