Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions. Diamond has remarkable optical characteristics. Several non-diamond materials, which include cubic zirconia and silicon carbide and are often called diamond simulants, resemble diamond in appearance and many properties. Special gemological techniques have been developed to distinguish natural and synthetic diamonds and diamond simulants. Diamond has a hardness of 10 (hardest) on this scale. Diamond’s hardness has been known since antiquity, and is the source of its name.
Diamond
Diamond hardness depends on its purity, crystalline perfection and orientation: hardness is higher for flawless, pure crystals oriented to the <111> direction (along the longest diagonal of the cubic diamond lattice). Therefore, whereas it might be possible to scratch some diamonds with other materials, such as boron nitride, the hardest diamonds can only be scratched by other diamonds and nanocrystalline diamond aggregates.
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