Dissolving Diamonds

[alxian]

are there any known low energy methods to dissolve crystals of natural/artifical diamond (pure carbon structures).

 

basically can a diamond be dissolved using only a chemical methods to melt it like candle wax releasing a trapped gas or is diamond chemically inert such that th carbon is removed withut absorbing the trapped gas.

[UncleAl]

Heat to 1000 C and drop into liquid oxygen.

 

A diamond crystal is a single molecule of covalently-bonded tetrahedral carbon. There is nothing to dissolve. It either sits there unchanged or is destroyed.

[CraigD]

are there any known low energy methods to dissolve crystals of natural/artifical diamond

I am not a chemist, but I don’t think so. Diamonds have no hydrogen or oxygen, or bonds with any H or O affinity, so the usual dissolving tricks seem futile.

 

If you just want diamond in a solution, grinding it into a fine powder should do the trick. Fine enough, and the usual name for carbon becomes “graphite”, not “diamond”.

[nkt]

I've seen that trick done, Al. It took about a minute to "burn" away to nothing, and they used a big diamond! I wonder if De Beers use that trick much?

 

Has anyone heard about the "new" superhard diamond-beating carbon allotrope? It's supposed to be way harder than diamond, about .3 Moh harder! Very cool if true, it's some treated buckyballs or something.

[Jay-qu]

If you just want diamond in a solution, grinding it into a fine powder should do the trick. Fine enough, and the usual name for carbon becomes “graphite”, not “diamond”.

 

Isnt graphite carbon that is not tetrahedrally bonded in a 3d network lattice (in other words diamond) but bonded in a 2d lattice with delocalised electrons occupying the space in between lattices :rolleyes:

[CraigD]

Isnt graphite carbon that is not tetrahedrally bonded in a 3d network lattice (in other words diamond) but bonded in a 2d lattice with delocalised electrons occupying the space in between lattices :rolleyes:

Yes. Graphite has a stacked 2-d hexagonal crystal structure. Sorry for the confusion.

 

Can someone with Chemistry (or googling) skills superior to mine answer the question “can diamond be ground into graphite?”

[alxian]

grinding it might be the solution i'm lookgin for but grinding means friction which means heat

 

if you were to impregnate a porous diamond or allotrope crystal with hydrogen under extreme pressure till it became liquid or even metallic grinding the diamond to release the hydrogen would likely cause the crystal to explode.

 

wht i'm looking for is a way to both create such a crystal with very small capillary-like tubes etched into it to be filled with hydrogen in a liquid or even solid crystalline/metallic form.

 

the problem i see is that with increase pressure the hydrogen could be kept in its metallic form but would the diamond be a good container? i mean how much diamond would you actually need to carry enough hydrogen to power a fuel celled car, after a certain weight diamond becomes too heavy. but if the diamond isn't thick enough it probably wouldn't withstand the extreme pressure of the hydrogen.

 

i was thinking at first if you can pump liquid hydrogen through such a crystal with capilarries that expanded along there length the hydrogen would warm as it changed phase from metal to liquid to gas the gas then could be used to power a fuel cell. another issue is controlling the explosive flow of the hydrogen gas from its crystaline prison. while oxygen is easily sourced from air in the atmosphere, for a purer more efficient engine carrying oxygen along too would be required but oxygen is less troublesome to carry in volume than hydrogen.

 

the dissolving diamond question was what if you could get hydrogen into a diamond crystaline structure and inclusion during it production but couldn't easily get it to flow out, you could melt the crystal slowly releasing the trapping hydrogen which stumped me as to how do you melt a diamond like an ice cube? besides with plasma which burns away your hydrogen, which is a bad thing unless your trying to build a pocket tokomak.

[Turtle]

Can someone with Chemistry (or googling) skills superior to mine answer the question “can diamond be ground into graphite?”

___Going off the cuff on this, I say no. Grinding up a diamond gives diamond dust. Neither will grinding up graphite result in carbon black, but rather graphite dust. Stretching a bit the other way, what do you get when you grind up Fullerines? Certainly not diamond!? :rolleyes: :hihi:

[UncleAl]

You can reactively dissolve diamond into iron triad elements then thermally transport and recrystallize as it exsolves. That is how industrial diamond is grown HPHT. That is also why you cannot drill or grind ferrous alloys with diamond abrasives - they graphitize.

 

http://www.me.berkeley.edu/diamond/submissions/diam_intro/cphased.htm

http://www.ictp.trieste.it/~scandolo/pdf/wang_prl_2005.pdf

http://phycomp.technion.ac.il/~anastasy/teza/teza/node5.html

http://lbruno.home.cern.ch/lbruno/documents/Bibliography/LHC_Note_78.pdf

Phys. Rev. B Condens. Matter 54(22) 15730 (1996)

http://www.knovel.com/knovel2/Toc.jsp?BookID=242

 

Thermodynamics proposes, kinetics disposes.

[rockytriton]

Ithink the more important question is, why the hell would you want to destroy a diamond? Why not just burn some money instead? :doh:

[Turtle]

:doh:

Ithink the more important question is, why the hell would you want to destroy a diamond? :) Why not just burn some money instead? :)

 

Rare diamond is an oxymoron. Russia has enough gem quality stones stockpiled to ruin the market in hours if they dumped them. New finds in Canada devalue diamonds as gems even more. Diamonds are for grinding & setting fire to money. :D