A diamond materials and devices team at Zhengzhou University in China has produced a millimeter-scale block of pure hexagonal diamond. Its paper, titled “Bulk hexagonal diamond,” was published in Nature.
The researchers used highly oriented pyrolytic graphite as the precursor and produced the material at 20,000 megapascals and 1,300 degrees Celsius.
The team analyzed the crystal structure and bonding characteristics using synchrotron X-ray diffraction and aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy. The researchers also used theoretical simulations to explain how graphite transforms into hexagonal diamond.
