Harder Than Diamond? The New Hexagonal Diamond Breakthrough
EP 38
·36:33

The molecular dynamics simulation

Watch Harder Than Diamond? The New Hexagonal Diamond Breakthrough

Transcript

This chapter, from the episode video's captions · 399 words

36:33because normally what you would get in this use case is the spreading of cubic diamond, yeah. But because we've created our uh specific type of graphite, because we've created the specific pressure mechanism, and we've coded it at the top and bottom to make sure the pressure was distributed >> yeah, and as you can see the the It's only being squished this way, vertically, right? It's not being squished the other way. >> Right. Right. >> that those two dimensions, this dimension and the one inside and out is being preserved. The only part that's getting squished is vertical, and that's why we're getting very specific hexagonal graphite. Sorry, hexagonal diamond. And so this is the molecular dynamic simulation that they where they show this is how we think it should happen. This is part of their paper, and

37:14all obviously for like this type of paper, you want to show the mechanism. Okay, so this was a very cool molecular dynamic simulation that they're showing. So, they do the they do the experiment, and they come up with samples. These are what the samples look like. You've got some pretty large samples, so that bar is 200 microns. Five of those is a millimeter. So, this is about the size of a millimeter plus, which means I can see it with my naked eye. Before everything was like sub-micron level. Like I had to go into the Canyon Diablo meteorite, go under a scanning tunneling microscope, and even then there was that dude who was like, "No, this is just cubic diamond." Right? Here the whole thing they're saying is hexagonal diamond.

37:55>> Yes. >> Okay? >> Yes. And and the the the the idea being it it it both passes just like the kind of the sniff test because of its size. Like it's just like, "Oh, well, if you can't make it that big, then it I don't care." But it then also makes it easier to look at it. >> Yeah, because now with something this big, I can actually start doing X-ray diffraction studies in a clean manner. I can do transmission electron microscopy in a clean manner. And so at first all they did was X-ray diffraction, and this thing called selected area electron diffraction, which is just instead of x-rays you're using electrons, and they did a Vickers hardness scale.

From Harder Than Diamond? The New Hexagonal Diamond Breakthrough

A 50-year debate, a harder-than-diamond claim, and some very funny peer review drama.