This sounds like a major breakthrough. Maybe we get a new semiconductor material out of this.<p>Unfortunately, it's on phys.org and in materials science, where overhyped major breakthroughs in surface chemistry (referred to as "nanotechnology") happen regularly. Note that the picture of some diamonds has absolutely nothing to do with the new development.<p>The actual paper [1] is more useful. They are doing this in ordinary air, not under an inert gas or something. They're getting an amorphous diamond film, not a single crystal, and may be able to get diamond powder. That's nice, but synthetic diamond powder is only $140/Kg on Alibaba.<p>[1] <a href="http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/aplmater/3/10/10.1063/1.4932622" rel="nofollow">http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/aplmater/3/10/1...</a>
I know very little about materials, but would I be right to assume this is a genuinely amazing and revolutionary discovery that should impact everyday people in the relatively near future (10 years)?
Can someone explain what they are trying to say with the whole, "room temperature" thing.<p>>The carbon is then hit with a single laser pulse lasting approximately 200 nanoseconds. During this pulse, the temperature of the carbon is raised to 4,000 Kelvin (or around 3,727 degrees Celsius)<p>Are they trying to say that they can make diamonds at STP as opposed to creating a controlled environment in a box?
tl;dr - Q-Carbon is formed using "elemental carbon" laid on a substrate then hit with laser at 4000 degrees (not room temperature then) but at room pressure.<p>It is ferromagnetic ("we did not even know that was <i>possible</i>" - you and me both) and it glows when subject to energy - looking like your next TV will be made of diamond.<p>Seems that material
Science still has power to amaze us
I tried locating the paper "Novel Phase of Carbon, Ferromagnetism and Conversion into Diamond" by Jagdish Narayan and Anagh Bhaumik which is given as one of the sources for the artikel and was supposedly published yesterday. I can't find it though :(<p>The DOI doesn't check out and it's not on the Journal of Applied Physics homepage. Can anyone point me to it?
Thanks for the link, I've added it to my notebook.<p>I like how they don't know much about how it works but they have filed two provisional patents :-) Reminds me of the early days of Radio in some regards.<p>There are a lot of theoretically interesting things you can make out of carbon if you can arrange it "just so." The trick is always finding ways to do that at scale. I was fascinated by the carbon nanotube stuff and set about to build some, and while it is "easy" to build nanotubes, it is "hard" to build a specific kind of nanotube, or a nanotube of a specific length, or one with specific properties. All the ways of making them that I explored could make pretty much any kind (single/double walled, conductive/non-conductive). And you can pull one out and say "look here is this cool structure" but there wasn't any way to make a few hundred thousand without going blind looking through a microscope.
Between the dinky laser and the STP, this reminds me of the magic radios from A Fire Upon The Deep -- the idea of a technology that could be built by a (moderately) low-tech civilization, but not designed or invented by them.
"In addition, Q-carbon is harder than diamond"<p>I was under the impression diamonds were pretty much the hardest known material. If that's so, then I imagine that this alone is the most significant part of their discovery?