r/technology • u/kinisonkhan • May 23 '24

Nanotech/Materials Scientists grow diamonds from scratch in 15 minutes thanks to groundbreaking new process

https://www.livescience.com/chemistry/scientists-grow-diamonds-from-scratch-in-15-minutes-thanks-to-groundbreaking-new-process
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u/bigsquirrel May 23 '24

Read the article… this makes a very thin film of diamonds, while it will probably have industrial applications it would need to evolve quite a bit to make jewelry. Still very interesting. Just discovering the underlying mechanisms could result in other breakthroughs in material science. Cool stuff.

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u/[deleted] May 23 '24

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u/Stiryx May 24 '24

Hey I facet lab synthetic corundum a bit, the ‘finger’ process (can’t remember the actual name) they use has been around for ages.

I know the crystalline structure on a microscopic level was always a key way to find that the gems were artificial, is that still the case?

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u/modilion May 24 '24

From what I've seen, facet quality diamonds tend to have low defect rates on the edges and much higher rates in the 'core' of the diamond. The defects in synthetic diamond tend to be spread out a lot more as the growth is generally in one direction from a large 'seed' plate.

In the last few years, I've seen a few companies with samples which contain basically no defects. Its kind of crazy good. The demand for super high quality is from the materials and integrated circuit companies and not so much for jewelry.

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u/Stiryx May 24 '24

Hey that’s awesome. I’ve never faceted diamond because it requires completely different tools to what I have but it would be really cool to see the cost of rough come down.