Forget billions of years: Researchers have grown diamonds in just 150 minutes

[gene-h]

What's more important is that they demonstrated making diamond at 1 atm and lower temperatures(1025 C). This is compared to ~50,000 atm and ~1500 °C diamond is conventionally made at. The diamonds they made were very small, but this is a new process and optimization might enable it to make bigger diamonds.

[JoeAltmaier]

Recently determined diamonds normally form in geysers when magma spurts up through layers of rock. Takes minutes, not billions of years. Anyway, cool article.

[SketchySeaBeast]

Well, slightly harder to replicate under laboratory conditions.

Sort of like if there was an article saying we'd figure out how to harness fusion for power and someone responded with "big deal, have you seen the sun?".

[squigz]

That's neat. Source?

[Simulacra]

I remember when lab grown diamonds really took off, and deBeers and others started calling their diamonds "natural"

[whatindaheck]

Buy our “Rare” Organic Non-GMO Rock!

[TheAceOfHearts]

Lab grown minerals should rebrand as "bloodless" to counter back.

[dylan604]

This company should hire Lily James to make a counter commercial to the "only natural" campaign.

[Aunche]

Jewelers have already done this successfully with a lot of gemstones. Artificial rubies, sapphires，and emeralds are dirt cheap, but natural ones are 100-1000x the price.

[Double_a_92]

But will it really be the same if you didn't have some little kid dig them out of mines? /s

[xhkkffbf]

It's pretty impressive what you can buy on eBay with the words "CVD Diamond" in the title. As best as I can tell, they're chemically identical. (Modulo honesty on eBay, of course.)

[Buttons840]

6 CT diamond for $600, not bad.

[TacticalCoder]

On that subject... I love gemstones. I just love them. But "real" aka "natural" ones tends to be very pricey.

Anyone know of reputable brands/places/sellers where I can buy synthetic / lab grown diamonds / sapphires / ruby etc. at a much cheaper price than "natural" ones?

[impossiblefork]

Tairus is probably reputable. I've bought anything from them though. Sometimes I look at their page of roughs and unusual crystals.

[ohmyiv]

My ex used to buy from best cut gems for her jewelry side hustle. She seemed pretty happy with them, but I dont know how the prices compare. There's also a subreddit about synthetic gems that has a vendor directory in their sidebar. I think the sub is synthetic gemstones.

[asah]

obvious reference! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age

[bsder]

I thought the real issue is that diamonds aren't uncommon (despite DeBeers) so weird manufacturing simply isn't profitable.

[DennisP]

Lab-made diamonds are common in jewelry these days, and generally cheaper than mined diamonds. I bought some from Belk recently.

[jl6]

So what kind of cool/useful things could we make out of diamond if diamond were suddenly very cheap?

[krisoft]

If you make them cheap enough we can make windowpanes out of diamond.

This is the titular conceit of Neal Stephenson's novel the Diamond Age. In that fictional futuristic word almost anything can be manufactured in nanotechnological "material compilers". And according to the novel if you can do that, at scale it is cheaper, and easier to build transparent panes for windows out of diamond than glass because the chemical structure is simpler.

[luma]

Crazy efficient heat sinks, diamond’s thermal conductivity is off the charts.

[FrameworkFred]

I've always wanted that diamond sword from Bard's Tale.

[NegativeLatency]

A phone screen or camera lens that's harder to scratch?

Diamond bearings?

IDK if the technique can create such a large crystal though.

[vonzepp]

Diamond with nitrogen valance centers are used as fluorescent markers. If a current passes close they change their emission spectrum. Some workon this as a method to measure neurons firing. So maybe that use case expands. Also quantum applications with diamond.

[rsfern]

Power electronics, maybe?

https://ece.illinois.edu/newsroom/63402

[tithe]

Anything with an edge: knives, drill bits, saws, scissors...maybe the last razor blade you'll ever buy!

[fmajid]

A substrate for CPU chips. In fact a lot of the synthetic diamonds for gemstones is a way to bootstrap the R&D for that end goal.

[schaefer]

diamond pickaxe, obviously.

But what will we do about our new existential crisis... If we no longer need to dig for diamonds, why would we dig at all?

[kloch]

I just had an idea that may be my worst technology idea ever.

Assemble some unstable atoms (that decay into carbon) into the desired cubic structure. When they decay you have a diamond.

The problem with this is that if it can decay fast enough (even with outside neutrons) it will be too hot (pun intended), and if it decays slowly enough it will take too long. Depending on the source isotopes and process it could also result in a radioactive diamond! Also, the heat of the process would have to not change the crystal structure.

However, some day when we master quarks and the weak interaction we might be able to do this quickly and safely.

[fch42]

Hmm; so the only thing that can "easily" decay into the stable forms of carbon - C12 and C13 that is - is N13 (β+ to C13 with "minutes" half-life). Nothing decays into C12, since N12 or O12 would have half-lifes so short as to make them "doubtful" isotopes.

But Nitrogen wouldn't crystallise in a diamond lattice; nevermind the crystal absorbing "heat" from the radioactive decay disturbing positions temporarily, there's just no way to arrange Nitrogen and Carbon atoms into similar locations of a crystal lattice. This sort of "transmutation" isn't even science fiction, it's only a dream

(follow your dreams but think a few times before trying to make money off them)

[Ellipsis753]

Why would this be easier than just making a diamond?

[ars]

Leaving aside the decay part of things, carbon makes a crystal structure of a diamond, other materials don't. So they would refuse to assemble into the right shape.