An international study led by UCL (University College London) and Hungarian scientists found a never-seen-before structure – an interlocking form of graphite and diamond – inside a meteorite that hit Earth 50,000 years ago.
According to an article on Live Science, the structure has unique properties “that could one day be used to develop superfast charging or new types of electronics”.
These unique diamond structures inside the Canyon Diablo meteorite, which hit Earth 50,000 years ago and was discovered in Arizona in 1891, are nothing like the diamonds we all know and picture. Rather, lonsdaleite diamonds – naturally formed only when asteroids strike Earth at enormously high speeds – have a hexagonal crystal structure and form only under extremely high pressures and temperatures. Lonsdaleites are named after Dame Kathleen Lonsdale, a British crystallographer and University College London’s first female professor.
But, while they were studying the lonsdaleite in the meteorite, the team found that instead of the pure hexagonal structures they were expecting, the structures had “growths of another carbon-based material called graphene interlocking with the diamond.” Known as diaphites, these growths have a layered pattern inside the meteorite that “don’t line up perfectly,” according to a statement by the researchers.
Now, these graphene growths can be studied and possibly be made in a lab. According to Christoph Salzmann, a chemist at University College London and co-author of a paper describing the research, “through the controlled layer growth of structures, it should be possible to design materials that are both ultra-hard and also ductile, as well as have adjustable electronic properties from a conductor to an insulator.”
Read more about the research here.
