Diamonds
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Researchers at Carnegie Science have developed an ultrahard diamond glass. Made entirely of crushed “soccerballs” of carbon, the new material also has high thermal conductivity and could find use in electronics.
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Material scientists in China experimenting with carbon in its many forms have conjured up a form of glass so hard that it can scratch the surface of a diamond, while also having the ability to act as semiconductor.
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A new method converts carbon from a variety of sources straight into useful forms such as graphene or diamond. The technique uses a “flash” of electricity to heat the carbon, converting it into a final form determined by the length of the flash.
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Geologists have studied tiny fluid impurities in diamonds to figure out how old humanity’s favorite rocks might be. They identified three periods of diamond formation in Africa over billions of years, with intriguing implications for ancient Earth.
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Exotic forms of carbon were predicted to exist under extremely high pressures. But in a new study researchers have examined carbon under the highest pressure ever studied in the lab, and found that diamond sticks around much longer than expected.
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There’s no such thing as random in classical physics – for true randomization you need to turn to quantum physics. Now scientists have done just that, creating secure encryption keys based on the genuine randomness of quantum vibrations of diamond.
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Diamond is a famously hard material, but now scientists have managed to stretch it further than ever before. Why? Stretching nanoscale samples changes their electronic and optical properties, which could open up a new world of diamond devices.
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An international team of researchers has succeeded in producing two types of diamonds in a matter of minutes, demonstrating a new technique where they not only form quickly, but do so at room temperature.
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Diamond is an electrical insulator, but maybe not always. A new study calculated that deforming diamond nano-needles would change their conductivity from an insulator to a semiconductor to a highly conductive metal – and back again at will.
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Engineers have developed a simple way to make colloidal diamonds that self-assemble. These structures have traditionally been tricky to manufacture in bulk, but with this new method they could be used to help make better photonic devices.
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Perhaps on other planets, diamonds are as common and boring as rocks. Astronomers suggest that some planets might actually be largely made of diamonds, and now a team has calculated how such a planet could form and how it would be structured.
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Fancy Swiss watchmaker Jaeger-LeCoultre has released a couple of new squillion-dollar, super tiny timepieces – the Snowdrop and the Bangle – featuring a 91-year-old mechanical movement that's still the world's smallest.
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