Diamond

Diamond is a solid shape of the detail carbon with its atoms organized in a crystal shape referred to as diamond cubic. At room temperature and stress, any other strong shape of carbon called graphite is the chemically stable shape, but diamond nearly never converts to it. Diamond has the best hardness and thermal conductivity of any natural material, residences which are applied in foremost commercial applications together with slicing and polishing gear. They are also the reason that diamond anvil cells can situation substances to pressures found deep within the Earth.

Diamond

A clear octahedral stone protrudes from a black rock.

The slightly misshapen octahedral form of this difficult diamond crystal in matrix is standard of the mineral. Its lustrous faces additionally suggest that this crystal is from a primary deposit.

General

Category

Native minerals

Formula

(repeating unit)

C

Strunz category

1.CB.10a

Dana type

1.3.6.1

Crystal machine

Cubic

Crystal class

Hexoctahedral (m3m)

H-M symbol: (four/m three 2/m)

Space organization

Fd3m (No. 227)

Structure

Jmol (3-d)

Interactive image

Identification

Formula mass

12.01 g/mol

Color

Typically yellow, brown, or grey to colorless. Less frequently blue, green, black, translucent white, purple, violet, orange, crimson, and crimson.

Crystal habit

Octahedral

Twinning

Spinel law commonplace (yielding "macle")

Cleavage

111 (ideal in four guidelines)

Fracture

Irregular/Uneven

Mohs scale hardness

10 (defining mineral)

Luster

Adamantine

Streak

Colorless

Diaphaneity

Transparent to subtransparent to translucent

Specific gravity

3.52±zero.01

Density

three.5–3.Fifty three g/cm3

Polish luster

Adamantine

Optical homes

Isotropic

Refractive index

2.418 (at 500 nm)

Birefringence

None

Pleochroism

None

Dispersion

zero.044

Melting point

Pressure structured

References

[1][2]

Because the association of atoms in diamond is extremely rigid, few sorts of impurity can contaminate it (two exceptions being boron and nitrogen). Small numbers of defects or impurities (about one per million of lattice atoms) color diamond blue (boron), yellow (nitrogen), brown (defects), green (radiation publicity), purple, purple, orange or red. Diamond also has exceedingly excessive optical dispersion (ability to disperse light of various hues).

Most natural diamonds have a long time among 1 billion and 3.Five billion years. Most were shaped at depths among one hundred fifty and 250 kilometres (93 and one hundred fifty five mi) within the Earth's mantle, even though a few have come from as deep as 800 kilometres (500 mi). Under high strain and temperature, carbon-containing fluids dissolved various minerals and changed them with diamonds. Much greater these days (tens to masses of million years in the past), they were carried to the floor in volcanic eruptions and deposited in igneous rocks referred to as kimberlites and lamproites.

Synthetic diamonds may be grown from excessive-purity carbon below high pressures and temperatures or from hydrocarbon fuel by using chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Imitation diamonds also can be made from materials such as cubic zirconia and silicon carbide. Natural, synthetic and imitation diamonds are most normally distinguished the usage of optical strategies or thermal conductivity measurements.