Diamonds are for everything
No longer valued simply for its glamour and durability, diamond is turning its hand to applications in solar power, laser design and bionic eyes. James Mitchell Crow reports
Humans have long been drawn to diamonds. And not just for their sparkle. Since its earliest discovery, people seem to have appreciated diamond’s material properties just as much as its aesthetic charms. The ancient Chinese appear to have been tapping what is now one of diamond’s best known properties. The hardness of diamond comes from the particular arrangement of its component carbon atoms. Unlike the planar carbon sheets that make up graphite, in diamond the atoms form a cubic lattice structure in which each is covalently bonded to four others in a tetrahedral arrangement.