Some company execs say, "diamonds are a girl's best friend," but diamonds are also friendly
with both male and female chemists, engineers, biologists, construction workers...
diamonds get around!
Diamonds became traditional for wedding bands in the 1930s thanks to a clever marketing
scheme by De Beers.
Diamonds are a lattice formation of simple carbon, the same thing you, or your house,
or burned firewood is made of; carbon is one of the most common elements on earth.
The substance itself is a simple covalent carbon lattice.
Each carbon atom is bonded with four other carbon atoms, making them SUPER strong.
The carbon atoms are sharing their electrons, meaning we'd need to apply a lot of energy
to break them up; that equates to a high boiling and melting point.
We love diamonds, not for their intrinsic value, but because once cut, they looks purty,
and because of a psychological connection reinforced by advertisers.
Diamonds are not rare; they can be easily manufactured in a lab, and if you look outside
the world of romance, diamond's got game.
Covalent structures are valued in biological applications, as well as electronics, optics,
industry, research, and on and on.
Because of their awesome covalent-bonded strength, diamonds are preferred in "grinding, drilling,
cutting, and polishing…
[it] cuts faster and lasts longer" than metals or silicates -- imagine a diamondpaper instead
of sandpaper, a diamond file instead of a carbon steel one, diamonds suspended in oil
for polishing, or diamonds embedded in saw-wheels to cut through steel, concrete, or pretty
much whatever you throw in front of it.
Diamonds are useful in more than just industrial tools.
They don't have any free electrons, so diamonds are not electrically conductive, but don't
be sad for them.
Diamonds make up for it by being the most thermally conductive material of any solid
known to man!
Thermal conductivity means they make a great heat sink for electronics!
Additionally, they experience thermionic emission when heated to around 400 C -- essentially,
the added heat energy allows the diamond to boil off electrons!
Researchers at the University of Melbourne are attempting to use diamond in solar panels
in collect those extra electrons and increase the efficiency of solar energy collection!
BOOM diamonds!
Now, this is mostly with diamonds at normal scale, but these covalent carbon celebs can
exist in the nanoscale too.
A 2014 study in the Journal of Geology looked at the "character and distribution of nanodiamonds"
produced during a theorized extraterrestrial collision 13,000 years ago which caused an
extinction event of mastodons, saber-toothed cats, and American camels and horses.
Their paper uses the presence of nanodiamonds to add more credence to a meteor impact theory,
but nanodiamonds can also be created by nuclear explosions…
so… that seems bad, but they're not!
Nanodiamonds could be the future of medicine!
Nanodiamonds are biocompatible, which means they're nontoxic to humans, so researchers
are doing to try and use them to deliver drugs.
They're only about five-nanometers-long a DNA strand is 2.5 nanometers in diameter,
so these nanodiamonds are like… two DNA widths.
They can easily be created with a flawed colorful center -- creating a 3D star formation.
That nanodiamond star has a huge surface area relatively speaking (they are nano after all),
but are so small they can slip through the blood-brain barrier and deliver chemotherapy
directly to brain tumors!
YESS NANODIAMONDS!!
That's not all, they can easily create fluorescent nanodiamonds to help with medical imaging
and microscopy, they can be derived so they create visible blue-green light under certain
conditions, and can even be levitated in a vacuum by a "trapping laser" like optical
tweezers.
Considering they were only discovered during nuclear tests done by the USSR in the early
60s, nanodiamonds seem to be everywhere and their applications are incredible.
We've talked about graphene on this show before, perhaps you remember how incredibly incredible
that it… it could charge your cell phone in five seconds, also has medical capabilities
and could completely change how we construct future machines; diamonds and graphene are
related!
They're both arrangements of carbon.
So maybe, next time you grab a wedding band for your lovah, skip the diamond store and
get yourself some carbon.
Cause that stuff is tight.