Researchers find new phase of carbon, make diamond at room temperature

This sounds like a major breakthrough. Maybe we get a new semiconductor material out of this.<p>Unfortunately, it&#x27;s on phys.org and in materials science, where overhyped major breakthroughs in surface chemistry (referred to as &quot;nanotechnology&quot;) 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&#x27;re getting an amorphous diamond film, not a single crystal, and may be able to get diamond powder. That&#x27;s nice, but synthetic diamond powder is only $140&#x2F;Kg on Alibaba.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;scitation.aip.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;aip&#x2F;journal&#x2F;aplmater&#x2F;3&#x2F;10&#x2F;10.1063&#x2F;1.4932622" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;scitation.aip.org&#x2F;content&#x2F;aip&#x2F;journal&#x2F;aplmater&#x2F;3&#x2F;10&#x2F;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, &quot;room temperature&quot; thing.<p>&gt;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 &quot;elemental carbon&quot; laid on a substrate then hit with laser at 4000 degrees (not room temperature then) but at room pressure.<p>It is ferromagnetic (&quot;we did not even know that was <i>possible</i>&quot; - 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 &quot;Novel Phase of Carbon, Ferromagnetism and Conversion into Diamond&quot; by Jagdish Narayan and Anagh Bhaumik which is given as one of the sources for the artikel and was supposedly published yesterday. I can&#x27;t find it though :(<p>The DOI doesn&#x27;t check out and it&#x27;s not on the Journal of Applied Physics homepage. Can anyone point me to it?

Thanks for the link, I&#x27;ve added it to my notebook.<p>I like how they don&#x27;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 &quot;just so.&quot; 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 &quot;easy&quot; to build nanotubes, it is &quot;hard&quot; 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&#x2F;double walled, conductive&#x2F;non-conductive). And you can pull one out and say &quot;look here is this cool structure&quot; but there wasn&#x27;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.

If they don&#x27;t call it &#x27;Diamond-Nine&#x27; I&#x27;m going to be disappointed.

&quot;In addition, Q-carbon is harder than diamond&quot;<p>I was under the impression diamonds were pretty much the hardest known material. If that&#x27;s so, then I imagine that this alone is the most significant part of their discovery?

Did they sell it?)