Diamonds - Natural And Man Made
In this articles we're going to cover what diamonds are made of
and also the actual manufacturing of diamonds. Yes, we have
reached the point where we can actually make a diamond. Isn't
technology great?
So what exactly are diamonds made from and how do they become
diamonds?
Well, believe it or not, diamonds are made of the same substance
that the lead in your pencil and coal is made of. It's just that
the atoms themselves are arranged in a way that make them
tighter than any other substance. The bonds are formed when
carbon exists at very high temperatures and under very high
pressure. Natural diamonds are made very deep in the Earth about
180 km below the surface where high temperatures and pressure
exist naturally. Under the earth's crust is the mantel, which is
made up of molten rock, metals and other materials.
The temperature is very high at this depth - between 1100
degrees Celsius and 1400 degrees Celsius. The high pressures are
produced by the weight of 180 km of rocks pressing down on it.
This is how the diamond comes to be. Besides the carbon there
are other substances like nitrogen and sulphur that can become
trapped in the crystal. These substances can add color to the
diamond, which under normal conditions is colorless. One of the
rarest diamond colors is pink, which just happens to be the
color of the diamond that Ben Afleck gave to Jennifer Lopez.
It's worth is about $3 million.
The question many people ask is, where exactly does the carbon
come from to make these diamonds? Well, some of the carbon comes
from the mantel of the Earth since the time it was formed, but
some of it also comes from the bodies and shells of
micro-organisms like algae in ancient oceans. This organic
carbon was buried in rocks that were dragged down into the
mantle because of plate tectonics and continental drift. The
fact of the matter is, all life forms on Earth are carbon based,
so technically if we were to fall into the ocean near a tectonic
plate where rocks were being dragged underneath we could, in a
million years or so, come back as a diamond. So, if that's how
diamonds are made then how is it possible to make diamonds
artificially?
Well, producing a material that is harder than a natural diamond
has actually been a goal of scientists for a very long time and
in 2004, a group of scientists at the Carnegie Institution's
Geophysical Laboratory in Washington, DC produced gem sized
diamonds that are harder than any other crystals. These diamonds
were made from a gas mixture at a rate that is 100 times faster
than any other method that has been used to date. The crystals
were so hard that they actually broke the equipment used and
were made in less than a day.
The crystals were grown using a special high growth-rate
chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process that they developed.
They then subjected the crystals to a high pressure, high
temperature treatment to further harden the crystals. The way
the process works is like this. Hydrogen and methane gas are
bombarded with charged particles, or plasma, in a chamber. The
plasma produces a chemical reaction that results in "carbon
rain," that falls on a seed in the chamber. After this rain hits
the seed the carbon atoms arrange themselves in the same
structure as the seed. By using this method they have grown
diamonds up to 10 millimeters across and 4.5 millimeters in
thickness.
If you ever saw the Superman episode where they needed to find a
diamond to replace the one lost from the idol, you saw that it
required placing carbon under a thousand tons of pressure for a
million years. Superman of course squeezed the carbon in his
hand and in seconds had a diamond.
It seems we're not too far away from that now.