Chinese Researchers Create Hardest Ever Synthetic Diamond

Nanotechweb.org reported that researchers at China’s Yanshan University have created a new type of nanostructured diamond that is “much harder than its natural counterpart.” It is also able to remain more stable at higher temperatures.

As quoted in the market news:

The researchers found that the hardness of their new material is as high as 200 GPa. To compare, single-crystal diamond’s hardness lies between 60 and 130 GPa. Values for nanocrystalline diamonds without nanotwins are between 130 and 145 GPa.

‘Our new nanodiamond might be used as an advanced tool material in a wide variety of machining, drilling and die applications in industry,’ Tian told nanotechweb.org. ‘It would also be ideal in anvil cells because we expect that it could withstand pressures as high as 500 GPa or even 1 TPa, which is much more than that possible with the traditional diamond anvil cells routinely used in scientific instruments today.’

Click here to read the full Nanotechweb.org report.