The diamond family welcomes its newest member – paracrystalline diamond

Diamond is having a moment: a new type of diamond, that’s both amorphous and crystalline at the same time, has been made by a team of scientists in the US. Meanwhile, amorphous diamonds have been made in bulk by a team in China.

Diamonds are famous for their breathtaking crystallinity, extreme hardness and sparkling beauty. But non-crystalline, amorphous diamond, which doesn’t have the same crystalline regularity in its atomic structure, is even more precious to some scientists because of its potential material properties: it’s ultrahard, has great thermal conductivity and could be tuned to have more as-yet-unknown properties. But until now, only the smallest dust-like particles of amorphous diamond have been produced. Now, two teams working on opposite sides of the world have taken steps that will make it possible to investigate these materials further, and one of those teams has even come up with a new form of diamond.