Speaker

Natural and Synthetic Diamonds
Diamond is the hardest material known, and has superb physical and chemical properties which are suitable for technological applications. Most of them a naturally occurring diamonds have deep-seated origin (at ~ 150 km depth) and are found in Kimberlite pipes (South Africa) which serve as the diamond conduits. Synthetic diamonds (smaller, up to 10 carats) have been synthesized in laboratory by one of the two processes: (1) High Pressure–High Temperature (HPHT); (2) Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) The properties (i.e.,impurities, form, hardness, color, optical and thermal properties) of natural and synthetic diamonds are compared. Diamonds are indispensable in HPHT research involving the knowledge about the Earth and Planetary deep interiors. Professor Murli H. Manghnani, Director, High Pressure Mineral Physics and Materials Science Laboratory, University of Hawaii, Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, is engaged in high pressure- high temperature research involving synthesis and characterization of the Earth materials and advanced materials of technological importance. He was born and educated in India (M.S.) and USA (Ph.D.). Over the past four decades, his research, has been supported at UH by the U. S. National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Keck Foundation, and other agencies (total funding over $15 million). He has published 200 scientific papers in various fields of Earth Sciences, Physics, Chemistry and Materials Science, and co-edited 7 international books in the field of High P-T Research. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union and American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of Mineralogical Society of America, a recipient of Guggenheim Fellowship award for HPHT synchrotron X-ray research..