The first ultra-hard diamond, lonsdaleite, was discovered in the Canyon Diablo meteorite in Arizona in 1967. While scientists have since found it challenging to recreate the same artificially, the Chinese research team has come up with a method to synthesize nearly pure, well-crystallized hexagonal diamonds from graphite, the South China Morning Post reported.
The study states that the synthetic diamond is of high quality and possesses excellent physical properties. It is 40% harder than natural diamonds and has greater thermal stability than nanodiamonds, which are smaller than 100 nanometers.