Emily Chan
Thanks to a new technique, scientists are now able to grow diamonds from scratch in just 15 minutes.
Usually, the process of acquiring natural diamonds or creating lab-grown ones is very painstaking and time-consuming.
To retrieve natural diamonds, it takes enormous amounts of pressure and high temperatures of over 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit since they are buried deep beneath the Earth’s surface in the mantle.
For about 99 percent of all artificially created diamonds, similar methods are employed. Intense pressure and scorching temperatures must be applied to convert carbon into a diamond, using a starter diamond as a base.
However, these extreme conditions are challenging to produce and maintain. The process also affects the size of the gemstones, and it takes one to two weeks for them to form.
The new technique eliminates some of the major downsides of both processes. Rodney Ruoff, a physical chemist at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea, led the team that developed this new approach.
“For over a decade, I have been thinking about new ways to grow diamonds, as I thought it might be possible to achieve this in what might be unexpected (per ‘conventional’ thinking) ways,” Ruoff stated.
The team loaded a 2.4-gallon homemade chamber with electrically heated gallium and a little bit of silicon in a graphite crucible.
The element gallium was chosen because previous, unrelated research showed that it would be a good catalyst.
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