Research just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals the discovery of a completely new type of diamond that, while not as beautiful as jewelry diamonds, could have spectacular technological applications in the world. future.
More specifically, it is an alien diamond, taken from the Canyon Diablo meteorite, which crashed into the Earth 50,000 years ago on the land of present-day Arizona. At that time, modern humans Homo sapiens existed but did not migrate to this land, according to archaeological evidence.
A piece of the ancient giant meteorite Canyon Diablo – Photo: Dave Pape
“Through controlled layered development of the structures, it can be used to design materials that are super-hard but also very malleable, as well as having tunable electronic properties from conductive to electrical insulation” – chemist Christoph Salzmann from University College London (UCL, a member school of the University of London – UK).
These meteorite diamonds are given their own name, Iondaleite, after British crystallographer Dame Kathleen Lonsdale.
According to Live Science, scientists initially thought they were a form of diamond with a hexagonal crystal structure. They can only be formed with extremely high pressures and temperatures, which are thought to be related to the collision between the meteorite and the Earth.
Inside this meteorite there are diamonds with a strange structure.
In this new study, however, the scientists discovered that they are not the pure hexagonal crystal structures expected, but also represent the development of another type of carbon-based material, almost the structure of diamond and coal interlocking.
The structures form in a peculiar stacking pattern, which is not as perfect as a diamond’s, and that makes it all the more precious and unique.
It has the properties of graphene, a material whose structure is a sheet of carbon one atom thick, arranged in a hexagonal shape. Graphene is a material that is still being researched on Earth, promising many applications because it is both hard as diamond, “light as a feather”, transparent and highly conductive, 1 million times thinner than a human hair.
The discovery of this structure in meteorites has the potential to open up an exciting avenue for materials technology.
