A research team led by Ehime University has successfully synthesised what it believed to be the world’s hardest artificial diamond, a professor from the university said on Saturday.
The cylindrical diamond, dubbed “Hime”, measures over 1 centimetre in diameter and length.
Having jointly developed it with Osaka-based Sumitomo Electric Industries Ltd, the team aims to commercialise the Hime diamond as early as next year, said Tetsuo Irifune, head of the Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture-based university’s Geodynamics Research Centre. When the diamond type was first synthesised in 2003, it could only be made up to about 1 millimetre in diameter, but the use since March 2009 of ultra-high-pressure synthesising machinery has made development of a larger product possible, he said.
“A large Hime diamond is useful for experiments to study the high-pressure deep interior of earth,” Irifune said. —Kyodo