Drinks and diamonds

Synthetic diamonds is a market which has been increasing for years, with rising concerns of the ethical nature of diamond harvesting, as well as the prices. With this, the various techniques and materials used to create the synthetic diamonds have reached almost a comical level.

IN 2008, some scientists from Mexico actually discovered a way to create diamonds out of tequila. Apparently, you can take the heated vapor from 80-proof tequila, put it on a silicon or stainless steel substate, and create diamond films.

But why does this work? "The key to the surprising discovery is tequila's ratio of hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon, which lies within the "diamond growth region." The resulting diamond films could have inexpensive commercial applications as electrical insulators."

This discovery came about because they were attempting to create diamonds from organic solutions when they realized that the proportions of ethanol and water which they were using was extremely close to tequila. Being scientists, and wanting to test this theory, they went out the next day and purchased some cheap tequila.

They started by heating the tequila to make it into a gas, then heated that gas to about 800 degrees C in order to break down the structure, which creates the diamond crystals. The possible implications for this is creating diamonds which can work in semiconductors without having to mine for them.

Source: https://phys.org/news/2008-11-scientists-tequila-diamonds.html