If you take a laser and fire it into carbon nano-fibers laying on the right kind of substrate the carbon will melt and crystallize into diamond. And nano-fibers will have their uses in electronics, tool production or even the making of jewels.
To some, it might sound almost like alchemy. You just take carbon nano-fibers and using technology you transform them into diamond. And diamond itself is a material with extraordinary properties. Some of its modern applications include using it as parts of protective gear or in optical devices. And as you should know, diamond is also quite rare making them hard to get – that’s why they are so expensive.
Nonetheless, advanced nanotechnologies and lasers can get us around this. A research them from the North Carolina State University (NCSU) recently developed a new approach that can transform carbon nano-fibers and nano-tubes into diamond fibers.
Natural diamonds are created in the furnace of high temperatures and pressures that you can find in the depths of space. You might expect that making of artificial diamonds will require similar conditions. But the technology allows us to create diamonds in room temperatures and pressures. Though you still need quite impressive stuff to do it. In this case, you need a laser that fires pulses that last just 100 nanoseconds into the carbon nano-fibers. This causes them to warm up to roughly 3 730 degrees Celsius and melts them.
Under regular circumstances, the carbon nano-fiber would just vaporize. To prevent that the scientists used a special substrate that reduced the heat transfer so the carbon doesn’t vaporize. And when they rapidly cooled the melted nano-fibers they crystallized into diamond.
A similar approach could allow us to make diamond nano-fibers to be used in electronics but perhaps also in the quantum computers that are being developed.
Sources:
- https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2019/nr/c8nr08823c/unauth#!divAbstract
- https://news.ncsu.edu/2019/01/new-method-allows-direct-conversion-of-carbon-fibers-and-nanotubes-into-diamond-fibers/
