South Korean researchers have developed a new technique for creating synthetic diamonds — and they think they’ve only scratched the surfac

Synthetic diamonds may have just gotten way easier to make

submited by

Style Pass

2024-05-08 11:00:01

South Korean researchers have developed a new technique for creating synthetic diamonds — and they think they’ve only scratched the surface of its potential.

Synthetic diamonds: Aside from jewelry, diamonds are used in drilling, manufacturing, healthcare, quantum computing, and more. The cost and uncertainty of finding the right kind of diamonds in nature inspired scientists to see if they could make them in the lab.

In the 1950s, a team at General Electric pulled it off using a process called “high-pressure high-temperature” (HPHT), which mimics the conditions that create diamonds in nature. This process is still used to make 99% of synthetic diamonds, though one called “chemical vapor deposition” (CVD), which doesn’t require high pressures, also works.

Both techniques are far faster than the natural method, producing diamonds in weeks instead of eons, but they require expensive equipment, and diamonds produced using them are typically limited in size.