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Industrial diamond
MINERAL

WRITTEN BY: The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Industrial diamond, any diamond that is designated for industrial use, principally as a cutting tool or
abrasive. In general, industrial diamonds are too badly flawed, irregularly shaped, poorly coloured, or
small to be of value as gems, but they are of vital importance in the modern metalworking and mining
industries. Their utility stems from the fact that diamond is the hardest natural substance known.

Industrial diamonds can be mined from natural deposits, or they can be produced synthetically. Among
the naturally occurring diamonds, three varieties exist: ballas, bort, and carbonado.

Ballas, or shot bort, is composed of concentrically arranged, spherical masses of minute diamond
crystals. Ballas is extremely hard, tough, and difficult to cleave. Principal sources are Brazil and South
Africa. Brazilian ballas is said to be the harder of the two.

Bort is a gray to black massive diamond, the colour of which is caused by inclusions and impurities. The
name is also applied to badly coloured, flawed, or irregularly shaped diamond crystals that are unsuited
for gem purposes. Drilling bort is composed of small, round stones averaging 20 to the carat and is used
in diamond drill bits. Crushing bort, the lowest grade of diamond, is crushed in steel mortars and graded
into abrasive grits of various sizes; 75 percent of the world’s crushing bort comes from Congo (Kinshasa).
Its chief use is in the manufacture of grinding wheels for sharpening cemented carbide metal-cutting
tools, but it also is used as loose grains suspended in oil or water for lapping and polishing.

Carbonado, known in the trade as carbon, is black opaque diamond. It is as hard as crystallized diamond
but less brittle, and, because its structure is slightly porous, it has a lower specific gravity (3.51 to 3.29).
Carbonado has no cleavage and therefore is valuable for use in diamond-set tools. It usually occurs in
small masses in the diamond-bearing gravels of Bahia, Brazil, and in Borneo, but it is also found in the
Central African Republic and in Siberia. Rock-coring drills, widely used in exploring for new mineral
deposits, are made by mounting diamonds around the rim of a hollow metal drill crown. Other
important applications include saws for cutting rock and other hard materials, lathes and other types of
cutting tools, glass cutters, phonograph needles, hardness testers, and wire-drawing dies.

By the early 21st century, Congo (Kinshasa) and Russia led the world in industrial diamond production.
Other major producers of industrial diamonds include Australia and Botswana.

See also synthetic diamond.

https://www.britannica.com/science/synthetic-diamond

Synthetic diamond
CHEMICAL COMPOUND
WRITTEN BY: The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

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Synthetic diamond, man-made diamond that is usually produced by subjecting graphite to very high
temperatures and pressures. Synthetic diamond resembles natural diamond in most fundamental
properties, retaining the extreme hardness, broad transparency (when pure), high thermal conductivity,
and high electrical resistivity for which diamond is highly prized. Because synthesis is an expensive
process, large stones of gem quality are rarely made. Instead, most synthetic diamond is produced as
grit or small crystals that are used to provide hard coatings for industrial equipment such as grinding
wheels, machine tools, wire-drawing dies, quarrying saws, and mining drills. In addition, diamond films
can be grown on various materials by subjecting carbon-containing gas to extreme heat, and those
layers can be used in cutting tools, windows for optical devices, or substrates for semiconductors.

In 1880 the Scottish chemist James Ballantyne Hannay claimed that he had made diamonds by heating a
mixture of paraffin, bone oil, and lithium to red heat in sealed wrought-iron tubes. In 1893 the French
chemist Henri Moissan announced he had been successful in making diamonds by placing a crucible
containing pure carbon and iron in an electric furnace and subjecting the very hot (about 4,000 °C [7,000
°F]) mixture to great pressure by sudden cooling in a water bath. Neither of those experiments has been
repeated successfully.

During the first half of the 20th century, the American physicist Percy Williams Bridgman conducted
extensive studies of materials subjected to high pressures. His work led to the synthesis by the General
Electric Company, Schenectady, New York, of diamonds in its laboratory in 1955. The stones were made
by subjecting graphite to pressures approaching 7 gigapascals (1 million pounds per square inch) and to
temperatures above 1,700 °C (3,100 °F) in the presence of a metal catalyst. Tons of diamonds of
industrial quality have been made in variations of that process every year since 1960.

In 1961 shock-wave methods, or explosive-shock techniques, were first used to produce diamond
powder, and small quantities of the material are still formed that way. Beginning in the 1950s, Russian
researchers began to investigate methods for synthesizing diamond by decomposition of carbon-
containing gases such as methane at high heat and low pressure. In the 1980s commercially viable
versions of this chemical vapour deposition method were developed in Japan.
diamond
Learn about manufacturing diamonds for use in research.
© American Chemical Society

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Cesium 1.7 GPa Silver 85 GPa Strontium N/A

Rubidium 2.4 GPa Plutonium 96 GPa Technetium N/A
Lithium 4.9 GPa Niobium 105 GPa Iodine N/A
Arsenic 8 GPa Zinc 108 GPa Xenon N/A
Thallium 8 GPa Titanium 116 GPa Osmium N/A
Sodium 10 GPa Palladium 121 GPa Mercury N/A
Selenium 10 GPa Vanadium 128 GPa Polonium N/A
Indium 11 GPa Copper 130 GPa Astatine N/A
Barium 13 GPa Platinum 168 GPa Radon N/A
Lead 16 GPa Tantalum 186 GPa Francium N/A
Europium 18 GPa Manganese 198 GPa Radium N/A
Calcium 20 GPa Nickel 200 GPa Actinium N/A
Ytterbium 24 GPa Uranium 208 GPa Protactinium N/A
Bismuth 32 GPa Cobalt 209 GPa Neptunium N/A
Cerium 34 GPa Iron 211 GPa Americium N/A
Lanthanum 37 GPa Rhodium 275 GPa Curium N/A
Praseodymium 37 GPa Chromium 279 GPa Berkelium N/A
Neodymium 41 GPa Beryllium 287 GPa Californium N/A
Tellurium 43 GPa Molybdenum 329 GPa Einsteinium N/A
Magnesium 45 GPa Tungsten 411 GPa Fermium N/A
Promethium 46 GPa Ruthenium 447 GPa Mendelevium N/A
Silicon 47 GPa Rhenium 463 GPa Nobelium N/A
Cadmium 50 GPa Iridium 528 GPa Lawrencium N/A
Tin 50 GPa Hydrogen N/A Rutherfordium N/A
Samarium 50 GPa Helium N/A Dubnium N/A
Antimony 55 GPa Boron N/A Seaborgium N/A
Gadolinium 55 GPa Carbon N/A Bohrium N/A
Terbium 56 GPa Nitrogen N/A Hassium N/A
Dysprosium 61 GPa Oxygen N/A Meitnerium N/A
Yttrium 64 GPa Fluorine N/A Darmstadtium N/A
Holmium 64 GPa Neon N/A Roentgenium N/A
Zirconium 67 GPa Phosphorus N/A Copernicium N/A
Lutetium 67 GPa Sulfur N/A Nihonium N/A
Aluminum 70 GPa Chlorine N/A Flerovium N/A
Erbium 70 GPa Argon N/A Moscovium N/A
Scandium 74 GPa Potassium N/A Livermorium N/A
Thulium 74 GPa Gallium N/A Tennessine N/A
Hafnium 78 GPa Germanium N/A Oganesson N/A
Gold 78 GPa Bromine N/A
Thorium 79 GPa Krypton N/A