💎 Harder Than Diamond?!

Daily news that is actually intellectually stimulating.

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Anthony Ao
August 17, 2025

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Lab‑grown hexagonal diamond beats natural diamond on hardness — and shrugs off more heat

diamond GIF

Researchers in China, with a collaborator in Sweden, report growing a millimeter‑scale diamond with a hexagonal lattice by heating graphene inside a high‑pressure chamber. The material clocked 155 GPa hardness and stayed stable up to 1,100 °C, both above typical natural diamond values (≈70–100 GPa; ~700 °C). Prior attempts at hexagonal‑lattice diamonds were hampered by tiny size and low purity; this method overcomes those limits. The team expects industrial uses (drilling, machining, data storage, thermal management) rather than jewelry. The work is reported in Nature Materials

Why it matters

Demonstrating a reproducible route to bulk, high‑purity hexagonal diamond—with superior hardness and heat tolerance—opens the door to tougher tools and components where conventional cubic diamond falls short, especially at high temperatures.

ELI5 Summary

Scientists grew a new kind of diamond in a lab by squeezing and heating carbon so its atoms line up in a honeycomb‑like pattern. This “hexagon‑stacked” diamond tested harder than regular diamond and kept its strength even when heated to about 1,100 °C. They also made pieces big enough to see (around a millimeter), which is a big step up from the tiny specks made before.

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Stay curious,
Anthony Ao
The PhDLevel Team
☕️🐻 Powered by caffeine & curiosity

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